Remove a deleted folder from git history [duplicate]

Question

How can I remove a folder that is already deleted from the git history?

In my git repository I have a folder called /foo (1.2GB of size). I have deleted the folder foo with rm -rf /foo beause I do not need it any more. After many other commits I thought. Why is my remote repo so big...I have forgotten to do git rm --cached ... instead of rm -rf .... How can I now remove the folder from git history?

git rm --cached /foo won't work because the folder is already delete in an earlier commit.

Answer 1

The documentation covers the similar case of purging a file from history:

git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename' HEAD

Since you are deleting a whole directory, add the -r flag to git rm:

git filter-branch --index-filter \
                  'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch path/to/directory' HEAD

Note that this operation will take several minutes on larger repositories.

More importantly, it will make a new repository with distinct history and checksums. If you previously published your repository, the history of the new one will not be compatible with the history others have pulled.