Git: How to remove file from index without deleting files from any repository

Question

When you use

git rm --cached myfile

it doesn\'t delete from the local filesystem, which is the goal. But if you\'ve already versioned and c

Answer 1

Had the very same issue this week when I accidentally committed, then tried to remove a build file from a shared repository, and this:

http://gitready.com/intermediate/2009/02/18/temporarily-ignoring-files.html

has worked fine for me and not mentioned so far.

git update-index --assume-unchanged 

To remove the file you're interested in from version control, then use all your other commands as normal.

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged 

If you ever wanted to put it back in.

Edit: please see comments from Chris Johnsen and KPM, this only works locally and the file remains under version control for other users if they don't also do it. The accepted answer gives more complete/correct methods for dealing with this. Also some notes from the link if using this method:

Obviously there’s quite a few caveats that come into play with this. If you git add the file directly, it will be added to the index. Merging a commit with this flag on will cause the merge to fail gracefully so you can handle it manually.