How to remove files that are listed in the .gitignore but still on the repository?

Question

I have some files in my repository that should be ignored, i added them to the .gitignore but, of course, they are not removed from my repository.

So my question is, is there a magic command or script using filter-branch that can rewrite my history and remove all these files easily? Or simply a command that will create a commit that will remove them ?

Answer 1

You can remove them from the repository manually:

git rm --cached file1 file2 dir/file3

Or, if you have a lot of files:

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i --exclude-from=.gitignore`

But this doesn't seem to work in Git Bash on Windows. It produces an error message. The following works better:

git ls-files -i --exclude-from=.gitignore | xargs git rm --cached  

Regarding rewriting the whole history without these files, I highly doubt there's an automatic way to do it.
And we all know that rewriting the history is bad, don't we? :)

Answer 2

An easier way that works on any OS is to do

git rm -r --cached .
git add .
git commit -m "Removing all files in .gitignore"

You basically readd all files, except the ones in the .gitignore

Answer 3

As the files in .gitignore are not being tracked, you can use the git clean command to recursively remove files that are not under version control.

Use git clean -xdn to perform a dry run and see what will be removed.
Then use git clean -xdf to execute it.

Basically, git clean -h or man git-clean(in unix) will give you help.

Be aware that this command will also remove new files that are not in the staging area.

Hope it helps.

Answer 4

I did a very straightforward solution by manipulating the output of the .gitignore statement with sed:

cat .gitignore | sed '/^#.*/ d' | sed '/^\s*$/ d' | sed 's/^/git rm -r /' | bash

Explanation:

1. print the .gitignore file
2. remove all comments from the print
3. delete all empty lines
4. add 'git rm -r ' to the start of the line
5. execute every line.

Answer 5

The git will ignore the files matched .gitignore pattern after you add it to .gitignore.

But the files already existed in repository will be still in.

use git rm files_ignored; git commit -m 'rm no use files' to delete ignored files.