I want to remove a file from my repository.
git rm file_to_remove.txt
will remove the file from the repository, but it will also remove the file from the local file system. How do I remove this file from the repo without deleting my local copy of the file?
The git rm documentation states:
When
--cachedis given, the staged content has to match either the tip of the branch or the file on disk, allowing the file to be removed from just the index.
So, for a single file:
git rm --cached file_to_remove.txt
and for a single directory:
git rm --cached -r directory_to_remove
svn rm --keep-local.
git pull if you are behind the commit after git rm
Commented
May 22, 2014 at 17:02
git commit -m "Commit message" and git push. If you have any other staged changes (check with git status), they will also be committed at this time.
git rm --cached mylogfile.log and delete the file from the repository. To avoid losing the file on productive system i do a backup of the file and pull after this. The file get's deleted as mentioned before and need to be copied back from your backup. This is quite a pain, but i found no better solution for this problem.
Commented
Dec 14, 2017 at 18:37
To remove an entire folder from the repo (like Resharper files), do this:
git rm -r --cached folderName
I had committed some resharper files, and did not want those to persist for other project users.
Git Push repo branch to actually remove the files from the remote.
Commented
Dec 4, 2014 at 4:24
To remove files from the repository based on .gitignore, without deleting them from the local file system:
git rm --cached `git ls-files -i -c -X .gitignore`
For Windows Powershell:
git rm --cached $(git ls-files -i -c -X .gitignore)
git ls-files -i -X .gitignore | xargs -I{} git rm --cached "{}". Please consider modifying or adding this solution to the answer here, because it is a great tool to have...
.gitkeep which preserves an empty folder in repository. Eg. .gitignore contain folder uploads and repo is forced to keep track of .gitkeep. By removing all from repo under uploads it will remove also .gitkeep.
Commented
Jul 7, 2016 at 9:11
As per my Answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6313126/how-to-remove-a-directory-in-my-github-repository
Steps to remove directory
git rm -r --cached File-or-FolderName
git commit -m "Removed folder from repository"
git push origin master
Steps to ignore that folder in next commits
To ignore that folder from next commits make one file in root named .gitignore and put that folders name into it. You can put as many as you want
.gitignore file will be look like this
/FolderName
A more generic solution:
Edit .gitignore file.
echo mylogfile.log >> .gitignore
Remove all items from index.
git rm -r -f --cached .
Rebuild index.
git add .
Make new commit
git commit -m "Removed mylogfile.log"
rm --cashed is that it will eventually delete the file when one pulls - right ? And this is not what people want when they say "Remove a file from the repository without deleting it from the local filesystem". Now why was the solution above accepted is beyond me - probably the OP was working alone and never pulled ? Dunno. I understand the github "once pushed always there" issue ofc
Commented
Dec 14, 2013 at 12:42
Also, if you have commited sensitive data (e.g. a file containing passwords), you should completely delete it from the history of the repository. Here's a guide explaining how to do that: https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository
Git lets you ignore those files by assuming they are unchanged. This is done by running the
git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file.txtcommand. Once marking a file as such, git will completely ignore any changes on that file; they will not show up when running git status or git diff, nor will they ever be committed.
(From https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files)
Hence, not deleting it, but ignoring changes to it forever. I think this only works locally, so co-workers can still see changes to it unless they run the same command as above. (Still need to verify this though.)
Note: This isn't answering the question directly, but is based on follow up questions in the comments of the other answers.
assume locks you out from fixing the conflicts.
--no-assume-unchanged kind of revert it? Just have to save the file somewhere before doing so? I'm curious because I have database settings files ignored in my local and haven't encountered the situation you described, though I might just be nuking it and just recreating it when I did encounter problems so it was a non-issue for me.
If you want to just untrack a file and not delete from local and remote repo then use this command:
git update-index --assume-unchanged file_name_with_path
Note : this does not deal with history for sensitive information.
This process definitely takes some undertanding of what is going on with git. Over time, having gained that, I've learned to do processes such as:
.gitignore to ignore them - in many cases such as yours, the parent directory, e.g. log/ will be the regex to use..gitignore file change (not sure if push needed mind you, no harm if done).git rm --cached some_dir/git add .git commit -m"removal"
Above answers didn't work for me. I used filter-branch to remove all committed files.
Remove a file from a git repository with:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm file'
Remove a folder from a git repository with:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory'
This removes the directory or file from all the commits.
You can specify a commit by using:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory' HEAD
Or an range:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf vendor/gems' t49dse..HEAD
To push everything to remote, you can do:
git push origin master --force
git rm -r --cached NAME is the trick to remove it from your local git repo and prevent it from affecting anyone who pulls later (by deleting history of the file or directory from git.)
Commented
Mar 17, 2016 at 20:15
I would like to add to the accepted answer of @bdonlan.
git rm --cached filename
It is supposed to remove some files from the local staged area that you have mistakenly committed in some previous commit(s).
It moves files from Tracked 𝐭𝐨 Untracked state by that what I mean is, it deletes the files and adds them again.
So, git doesn't know about them anymore.
Summary: You removed files from staged and then pushed them will result in the deletion of files on the collaborating team's local repository as well (𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘢��𝘦, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘪𝘵 will be 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦. )
git has all the history available and you can revert back anytime. But the thing is should you do it? Like you delete your collaborator's file while you have that file available locally? In my case, the lead trusts me and merges my PR blindly. The application wasn't working on his machine while it was working on mine. Think about this scenario!
Commented
Jun 10, 2022 at 7:29
I used the following simple method to remove some IDE-related files from git as they made the repo look cluttered.
Note: This doesn't remove them from the git history.
Note: If you've accidentially committed passwords the first thing to do is change those passwords.
git status and check that the files are not listed.
This depends on what you mean by 'remove' from git. :)
You can unstage a file using git rm --cached see for more details. When you unstage something, it means that it is no longer tracked, but this does not remove the file from previous commits.
If you want to do more than unstage the file, for example to remove sensitive data from all previous commits you will want to look into filtering the branch using tools like the BFG Repo-Cleaner.
since rm --cache will delete files in the remote repository, you could use update-index instead
see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/ignore-files?view=azure-devops&tabs=visual-studio-2019
If you want to delete a file in the repository but not in the filesystem, it means that you do not want to keep trace of this file. In Git you have 4 alternatives (as specified here).
You can use a .gitignore file. In this case the file/folder is locally untracked.
You can edit .git/info/exclude in a similar way as the previous case. Here the difference is that the file is locally untracked.
You can use the git update-index assume-unchanged <filename> command to track a file, but the local changes are ignored.
You can use git update-index skip-worktree <filename> command to track a file, but the local changes are ignored.
Points 3 and 4 appear to do the same thing, but there are difference. At this link you can find an extensive list of tests about the behavior of these points. To summarize the differences we can say that the flag assume-unchanged assumes that a developer does not touch a file anymore. The flag skip-worktree instructs git to not touch the specific file anymore. It is useful when you add to the repository a configuration file, but you do not want to track its changes.
