Git - Remove All of a Certain Type of File from the Repository

Question

How do I remove all of a certain type of file from the Repository? I\'m using

git filter-branch --index-filter \'git rm -rf --cached **/*.jar\'

Answer 1

git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm -rf --cached **/*.jar'

should work, but it's a bit silly because git globs (*) match path separators. So, **/*.jar is equivalent to *.jar.

This also means that */a*.jar matches dir1/abc/dir2/log4j.jar. If you want to match something like **/a*.jar (all jars whose name starts with a in any directory), you should use find. Here's a command to remove any jars whose names start with a or b, and any jars in dir1/dir2, and any .txt file in any directory:

git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm -rf --cached "*.txt" "dir1/dir2/*.jar" $(find -type f -name "a*.jar" -o -name "b*.jar")'

References: pathspec section of git help glossary.