Remove file from git repository history

Question

I checked in (into github) some sensitive files by mistake. To remediate this, I followed the instructions here and ran the commands:

git filter-branch --force --index-filter "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch settings.json" --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
echo "settings.json" >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Add settings.json to .gitignore"
git push origin --force --all
git push origin --force --tags
git for-each-ref --format="delete %(refname)" refs/original | git update-ref --stdin
git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --prune=now

I can however go to my commit history to see the deleted file.

To fix this issue, how can I delete the file from github commit history?

Answer 1

Try instead to use the best practice is to use the new tool git filter-repo which replaces BFG and git filter-branch.

Note: if you get the following error message when running the above-mentioned commands:

Error: need a version of `git` whose `diff-tree` command has the `--combined-all-paths` option`

it means you have to update git.

---

See "Path based filtering":

git filter-repo --path settings.json --invert-paths

Then git push --force

No need for all those repack/gc/prune at the end: the tool does the cleanup for you.