I only recently added a .gitignore file to ignore some specific data files in a subdirectory of mine. I'd really like to go back in time and remove them from previous commits/history as well.
Is this easily accomplished? Where/how should I start?
This will be a two-step procedure:
Introduce the .gitignore file
For this to work, the early commits are going to have to have your .gitignore file. So, you need to:
- Check out the root commit:
git checkout -b temp $(git rev-list HEAD | tail -1) - Add the
.gitignorefile. git commit --amend- Rebase all of your existing branches onto "temp". This may or may not work seamlessly, so you might need to fiddle with it if any conflicts spring up.
- Check out your working branch and delete the temp branch.
Rewrite history
Now you can automatically remove these files from all of the branches by this command:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'git clean -f -X' -- --all
This will rewrite all of your branches to remove ignored files. It may take a while depending on the size of your repository.
See removing file from every commit section. It is exactly your case.
But be careful, as this feature as every history rewriting one DOES change every commit. So if you have public repository and someone could have based some work on it - it would lead to problems.
Look at something like below using filter-branch
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f passwords.txt' HEAD
git filter-branch is a possible solution. Make sure you understand the implications before you utilize it, as the changes are permanent. You won't be easily able to merge your filtered branch with the old one.
git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename' HEAD
Swap filename for the specific file you'd like gone.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6795342/git-ignore-changing-the-past