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I accidentally dropped a DVD-rip into a website project, then carelessly git commit -a -m ..., and, zap, the repo was bloated by 2.2 gigs. Next time I made some edits, deleted the video file, and committed everything, but the compressed file is still there in the repository, in history.
I know I can start branches from those commits and rebase one branch onto another. But what should I do to merge the 2 commits so that the big file doesn't show in the history and is cleaned in the garbage collection procedure?
Use the BFG Repo-Cleaner, a simpler, faster alternative to git-filter-branch specifically designed for removing unwanted files from Git history.
Carefully follow the usage instructions, the core part is just this:
$ java -jar bfg.jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M my-repo.git
Any files over 100MB in size (that aren't in your latest commit) will be removed from your Git repository's history. You can then use git gc to clean away the dead data:
$ git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
After pruning, we can force push to the remote repo*
$ git push --force
*NOTE: cannot force push a protect branch on GitHub
The BFG is typically at least 10-50x faster than running git-filter-branch, and generally easier to use.
Full disclosure: I'm the author of the BFG Repo-Cleaner.
What you want to do is highly disruptive if you have published history to other developers. See “Recovering From Upstream Rebase” in the git rebase documentation for the necessary steps after repairing your history.
You have at least two options: git filter-branch and an interactive rebase, both explained below.
Using git filter-branch
I had a similar problem with bulky binary test data from a Subversion import and wrote about removing data from a git repository.
Say your git history is:
$ git lola --name-status
* f772d66 (HEAD, master) Login page
| A login.html
* cb14efd Remove DVD-rip
| D oops.iso
* ce36c98 Careless
| A oops.iso
| A other.html
* 5af4522 Admin page
| A admin.html
* e738b63 Index
A index.html
Note that git lola is a non-standard but highly useful alias. (See the addendum at the end of this answer for details.) The --name-status switch to git log shows tree modifications associated with each commit.
In the “Careless” commit (whose SHA1 object name is ce36c98) the file oops.iso is the DVD-rip added by accident and removed in the next commit, cb14efd. Using the technique described in the aforementioned blog post, the command to execute is:
git filter-branch --prune-empty -d /dev/shm/scratch \
--index-filter "git rm --cached -f --ignore-unmatch oops.iso" \
--tag-name-filter cat -- --all
Options:
--prune-empty removes commits that become empty (i.e., do not change the tree) as a result of the filter operation. In the typical case, this option produces a cleaner history.
-d names a temporary directory that does not yet exist to use for building the filtered history. If you are running on a modern Linux distribution, specifying a tree in /dev/shm will result in faster execution.
--index-filter is the main event and runs against the index at each step in the history. You want to remove oops.iso wherever it is found, but it isn’t present in all commits. The command git rm --cached -f --ignore-unmatch oops.iso deletes the DVD-rip when it is present and does not fail otherwise.
--tag-name-filter describes how to rewrite tag names. A filter of cat is the identity operation. Your repository, like the sample above, may not have any tags, but I included this option for full generality.
-- specifies the end of options to git filter-branch
--all following -- is shorthand for all refs. Your repository, like the sample above, may have only one ref (master), but I included this option for full generality.
After some churning, the history is now:
$ git lola --name-status
* 8e0a11c (HEAD, master) Login page
| A login.html
* e45ac59 Careless
| A other.html
|
| * f772d66 (refs/original/refs/heads/master) Login page
| | A login.html
| * cb14efd Remove DVD-rip
| | D oops.iso
| * ce36c98 Careless
|/ A oops.iso
| A other.html
|
* 5af4522 Admin page
| A admin.html
* e738b63 Index
A index.html
Notice that the new “Careless” commit adds only other.html and that the “Remove DVD-rip” commit is no longer on the master branch. The branch labeled refs/original/refs/heads/master contains your original commits in case you made a mistake. To remove it, follow the steps in “Checklist for Shrinking a Repository.”
$ git update-ref -d refs/original/refs/heads/master
$ git reflog expire --expire=now --all
$ git gc --prune=now
For a simpler alternative, clone the repository to discard the unwanted bits.
$ cd ~/src
$ mv repo repo.old
$ git clone file:///home/user/src/repo.old repo
Using a file:///... clone URL copies objects rather than creating hardlinks only.
Now your history is:
$ git lola --name-status
* 8e0a11c (HEAD, master) Login page
| A login.html
* e45ac59 Careless
| A other.html
* 5af4522 Admin page
| A admin.html
* e738b63 Index
A index.html
The SHA1 object names for the first two commits (“Index” and “Admin page”) stayed the same because the filter operation did not modify those commits. “Careless” lost oops.iso and “Login page” got a new parent, so their SHA1s did change.
Interactive rebase
With a history of:
$ git lola --name-status
* f772d66 (HEAD, master) Login page
| A login.html
* cb14efd Remove DVD-rip
| D oops.iso
* ce36c98 Careless
| A oops.iso
| A other.html
* 5af4522 Admin page
| A admin.html
* e738b63 Index
A index.html
you want to remove oops.iso from “Careless” as though you never added it, and then “Remove DVD-rip” is useless to you. Thus, our plan going into an interactive rebase is to keep “Admin page,” edit “Careless,” and discard “Remove DVD-rip.”
Running $ git rebase -i 5af4522 starts an editor with the following contents.
pick ce36c98 Careless
pick cb14efd Remove DVD-rip
pick f772d66 Login page
# Rebase 5af4522..f772d66 onto 5af4522
#
# Commands:
# p, pick = use commit
# r, reword = use commit, but edit the commit message
# e, edit = use commit, but stop for amending
# s, squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit
# f, fixup = like "squash", but discard this commit's log message
# x, exec = run command (the rest of the line) using shell
#
# If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST.
# However, if you remove everything, the rebase will be aborted.
#
Executing our plan, we modify it to
edit ce36c98 Careless
pick f772d66 Login page
# Rebase 5af4522..f772d66 onto 5af4522
# ...
That is, we delete the line with “Remove DVD-rip” and change the operation on “Careless” to be edit rather than pick.
Save-quitting the editor drops us at a command prompt with the following message.
Stopped at ce36c98... Careless
You can amend the commit now, with
git commit --amend
Once you are satisfied with your changes, run
git rebase --continue
As the message tells us, we are on the “Careless” commit we want to edit, so we run two commands.
$ git rm --cached oops.iso
$ git commit --amend -C HEAD
$ git rebase --continue
The first removes the offending file from the index. The second modifies or amends “Careless” to be the updated index and -C HEAD instructs git to reuse the old commit message. Finally, git rebase --continue goes ahead with the rest of the rebase operation.
This gives a history of:
$ git lola --name-status
* 93174be (HEAD, master) Login page
| A login.html
* a570198 Careless
| A other.html
* 5af4522 Admin page
| A admin.html
* e738b63 Index
A index.html
which is what you want.
Addendum: Enable git lola via ~/.gitconfig
Quoting Conrad Parker:
The best tip I learned at Scott Chacon’s talk at linux.conf.au 2010, Git Wrangling - Advanced Tips and Tricks was this alias:
lol = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
This provides a really nice graph of your tree, showing the branch structure of merges etc. Of course there are really nice GUI tools for showing such graphs, but the advantage of git lol is that it works on a console or over ssh, so it is useful for remote development, or native development on an embedded board …
So, just copy the following into ~/.gitconfig for your full color git lola action:
[alias]
lol = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
lola = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all
[color]
branch = auto
diff = auto
interactive = auto
status = auto
Why not use this simple but powerful command?
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f DVD-rip' HEAD
The --tree-filter option runs the specified command after each checkout of the project and then recommits the results. In this case, you remove a file called DVD-rip from every snapshot, whether it exists or not.
If you know which commit introduced the huge file (say 35dsa2), you can replace HEAD with 35dsa2..HEAD to avoid rewriting too much history, thus avoiding diverging commits if you haven't pushed yet. This comment courtesy of #alpha_989 seems too important to leave out here.
See this link.
(The best answer I've seen to this problem is: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42544963/714112 , copied here since this thread appears high in Google search rankings but that other one doesn't)
🚀 A blazingly fast shell one-liner 🚀
This shell script displays all blob objects in the repository, sorted from smallest to largest.
For my sample repo, it ran about 100 times faster than the other ones found here.
On my trusty Athlon II X4 system, it handles the Linux Kernel repository with its 5,622,155 objects in just over a minute.
The Base Script
git rev-list --objects --all \
| git cat-file --batch-check='%(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize) %(rest)' \
| awk '/^blob/ {print substr($0,6)}' \
| sort --numeric-sort --key=2 \
| cut --complement --characters=13-40 \
| numfmt --field=2 --to=iec-i --suffix=B --padding=7 --round=nearest
When you run above code, you will get nice human-readable output like this:
...
0d99bb931299 530KiB path/to/some-image.jpg
2ba44098e28f 12MiB path/to/hires-image.png
bd1741ddce0d 63MiB path/to/some-video-1080p.mp4
🚀 Fast File Removal 🚀
Suppose you then want to remove the files a and b from every commit reachable from HEAD, you can use this command:
git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch a b' HEAD
After trying virtually every answer in SO, I finally found this gem that quickly removed and deleted the large files in my repository and allowed me to sync again: http://www.zyxware.com/articles/4027/how-to-delete-files-permanently-from-your-local-and-remote-git-repositories
CD to your local working folder and run the following command:
git filter-branch -f --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch FOLDERNAME" -- --all
replace FOLDERNAME with the file or folder you wish to remove from the given git repository.
Once this is done run the following commands to clean up the local repository:
rm -rf .git/refs/original/
git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --prune=now
git gc --aggressive --prune=now
Now push all the changes to the remote repository:
git push --all --force
This will clean up the remote repository.
100 times faster than git filter-branch and simpler
There are very good answers in this thread, but meanwhile many of them are outdated. Using git-filter-branch is no longer recommended, because it is difficult to use and awfully slow on big repositories.
git-filter-repo is much faster and simpler to use.
git-filter-repo is a Python script, available at github: https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo . When installed it looks like a regular git command and can be called by git filter-repo.
You need only one file: the Python3 script git-filter-repo. Copy it to a path that is included in the PATH variable. On Windows you may have to change the first line of the script (refer INSTALL.md). You need Python3 installed installed on your system, but this is not a big deal.
First you can run
git filter-repo --analyze
This helps you to determine what to do next.
You can delete your DVD-rip file everywhere:
git filter-repo --invert-paths --path-match DVD-rip
Filter-repo is really fast. A task that took around 9 hours on my computer by filter-branch, was completed in 4 minutes by filter-repo. You can do many more nice things with filter-repo. Refer to the documentation for that.
Warning: Do this on a copy of your repository. Many actions of filter-repo cannot be undone. filter-repo will change the commit hashes of all modified commits (of course) and all their descendants down to the last commits!
These commands worked in my case:
git filter-branch --force --index-filter 'git rm --cached -r --ignore-unmatch oops.iso' --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
rm -rf .git/refs/original/
git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --prune=now
git gc --aggressive --prune=now
It is little different from the above versions.
For those who need to push this to github/bitbucket (I only tested this with bitbucket):
# WARNING!!!
# this will rewrite completely your bitbucket refs
# will delete all branches that you didn't have in your local
git push --all --prune --force
# Once you pushed, all your teammates need to clone repository again
# git pull will not work
According to GitHub Documentation, just follow these steps:
Get rid of the large file
Option 1: You don't want to keep the large file:
rm path/to/your/large/file # delete the large file
Option 2: You want to keep the large file into an untracked directory
mkdir large_files # create directory large_files
touch .gitignore # create .gitignore file if needed
'/large_files/' >> .gitignore # untrack directory large_files
mv path/to/your/large/file large_files/ # move the large file into the untracked directory
Save your changes
git add path/to/your/large/file # add the deletion to the index
git commit -m 'delete large file' # commit the deletion
Remove the large file from all commits
git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
"git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch path/to/your/large/file" \
--prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
git push <remote> <branch>
I ran into this with a bitbucket account, where I had accidentally stored ginormous *.jpa backups of my site.
git filter-branch --prune-empty --index-filter 'git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch MY-BIG-DIRECTORY-OR-FILE' --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
Relpace MY-BIG-DIRECTORY with the folder in question to completely rewrite your history (including tags).
source: https://web.archive.org/web/20170727144429/http://naleid.com:80/blog/2012/01/17/finding-and-purging-big-files-from-git-history/
Just note that this commands can be very destructive. If more people are working on the repo they'll all have to pull the new tree. The three middle commands are not necessary if your goal is NOT to reduce the size. Because the filter branch creates a backup of the removed file and it can stay there for a long time.
$ git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch YOURFILENAME" HEAD
$ rm -rf .git/refs/original/
$ git reflog expire --all
$ git gc --aggressive --prune
$ git push origin master --force
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f path/to/file' HEAD
worked pretty well for me, although I ran into the same problem as described here, which I solved by following this suggestion.
The pro-git book has an entire chapter on rewriting history - have a look at the filter-branch/Removing a File from Every Commit section.
If you know your commit was recent instead of going through the entire tree do the following:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm LARGE_FILE.zip' HEAD~10..HEAD
This will remove it from your history
git filter-branch --force --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch bigfile.txt' --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
Use Git Extensions, it's a UI tool. It has a plugin named "Find large files" which finds lage files in repositories and allow removing them permenently.
Don't use 'git filter-branch' before using this tool, since it won't be able to find files removed by 'filter-branch' (Altough 'filter-branch' does not remove files completely from the repository pack files).
I basically did what was on this answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11032521/1286423
(for history, I'll copy-paste it here)
$ git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch YOURFILENAME" HEAD
$ rm -rf .git/refs/original/
$ git reflog expire --all
$ git gc --aggressive --prune
$ git push origin master --force
It didn't work, because I like to rename and move things a lot. So some big file were in folders that have been renamed, and I think the gc couldn't delete the reference to those files because of reference in tree objects pointing to those file.
My ultimate solution to really kill it was to:
# First, apply what's in the answer linked in the front
# and before doing the gc --prune --aggressive, do:
# Go back at the origin of the repository
git checkout -b newinit <sha1 of first commit>
# Create a parallel initial commit
git commit --amend
# go back on the master branch that has big file
# still referenced in history, even though
# we thought we removed them.
git checkout master
# rebase on the newinit created earlier. By reapply patches,
# it will really forget about the references to hidden big files.
git rebase newinit
# Do the previous part (checkout + rebase) for each branch
# still connected to the original initial commit,
# so we remove all the references.
# Remove the .git/logs folder, also containing references
# to commits that could make git gc not remove them.
rm -rf .git/logs/
# Then you can do a garbage collection,
# and the hidden files really will get gc'ed
git gc --prune --aggressive
My repo (the .git) changed from 32MB to 388KB, that even filter-branch couldn't clean.
git filter-branch is a powerful command which you can use it to delete a huge file from the commits history. The file will stay for a while and Git will remove it in the next garbage collection.
Below is the full process from deleteing files from commit history. For safety, below process runs the commands on a new branch first. If the result is what you needed, then reset it back to the branch you actually want to change.
# Do it in a new testing branch
$ git checkout -b test
# Remove file-name from every commit on the new branch
# --index-filter, rewrite index without checking out
# --cached, remove it from index but not include working tree
# --ignore-unmatch, ignore if files to be removed are absent in a commit
# HEAD, execute the specified command for each commit reached from HEAD by parent link
$ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch file-name' HEAD
# The output is OK, reset it to the prior branch master
$ git checkout master
$ git reset --soft test
# Remove test branch
$ git branch -d test
# Push it with force
$ git push --force origin master
NEW ANSWER THAT WORKS IN 20222.
DO NOT USE:
git filter-branch
this command might not change the remote repo after pushing. If you clone after using it, you will see that nothing has changed and the repo still has a large size. this command is old now. For example, if you use the steps in https://github.com/18F/C2/issues/439, this won't work.
You need to use
git filter-repo
Steps:
(1) Find the largest files in .git:
git rev-list --objects --all | grep -f <(git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/*.idx| sort -k 3 -n | cut -f 1 -d " " | tail -10)
(2) Start filtering these large files:
git filter-repo --path-glob '../../src/../..' --invert-paths --force
or
git filter-repo --path-glob '*.zip' --invert-paths --force
or
git filter-repo --path-glob '*.a' --invert-paths --force
or
whatever you find in step 1.
(3)
git remote add origin git#github.com:.../...git
(4)
git push --all --force
git push --tags --force
DONE!!!
You can do this using the branch filter command:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf path/to/your/file' HEAD
When you run into this problem, git rm will not suffice, as git remembers that the file existed once in our history, and thus will keep a reference to it.
To make things worse, rebasing is not easy either, because any references to the blob will prevent git garbage collector from cleaning up the space. This includes remote references and reflog references.
I put together git forget-blob, a little script that tries removing all these references, and then uses git filter-branch to rewrite every commit in the branch.
Once your blob is completely unreferenced, git gc will get rid of it
The usage is pretty simple git forget-blob file-to-forget. You can get more info here
https://ownyourbits.com/2017/01/18/completely-remove-a-file-from-a-git-repository-with-git-forget-blob/
I put this together thanks to the answers from Stack Overflow and some blog entries. Credits to them!
Other than git filter-branch (slow but pure git solution) and BFG (easier and very performant), there is also another tool to filter with good performance:
https://github.com/xoofx/git-rocket-filter
From its description:
The purpose of git-rocket-filter is similar to the command git-filter-branch while providing the following unique features:
Fast rewriting of commits and trees (by an order of x10 to x100).
Built-in support for both white-listing with --keep (keeps files or directories) and black-listing with --remove options.
Use of .gitignore like pattern for tree-filtering
Fast and easy C# Scripting for both commit filtering and tree filtering
Support for scripting in tree-filtering per file/directory pattern
Automatically prune empty/unchanged commit, including merge commits
This works perfectly for me : in git extensions :
right click on the selected commit :
reset current branch to here :
hard reset ;
It's surprising nobody else is able to give this simple answer.
git reset --soft HEAD~1
It will keep the changes but remove the commit then you can re-commit those changes.
I'd like to run black to format all the staged .py files on a commit. Unfortunately due to employer network VPN and restrictions I'm unable to use the pre-commit package because it times out when trying to load the repo.
So I decided to write my own pre-commit hook. Currently I have this
#!/bin/sh
# Check if this is the initial commit
if git rev-parse --verify HEAD >/dev/null 2>&1
then
echo "pre-commit: About to create a new commit..."
against=HEAD
else
echo "pre-commit: About to create the first commit..."
against=4b825dc642cb6eb9a060e54bf8d69288fbee4904
fi
# Autoformat with black
echo "pre-commit: Autoformatting Python code with black"
black $(git diff-index --cached --name-only --diff-filter=d $against)
The first part I found from Atlassian. The second part needs a filter of some sort to only take the .py files from the column which is returned by diff-index. How to get only the .py files from the list?
Also: I'm quite new to git hooks. Is this a robust way for me and my colleagues to make sure all code is formatted with black?
If you're looking for a way to do this in bash, the missing piece to the puzzle there is the filter to git diff-index.
in your case, you can diff against HEAD which will limit it to the filenames being committed:
$ git diff --staged --name-only --diff-filter=d -- '*.py'
t.py
the expression as written in your original post is also a bit problematic due to files potentially containing spaces in them -- usually the fix for this is to use -z with the output and xargs -0 to run the tool (this will cause filenames to be '\0' delimited):
git diff --staged --name-only --diff-filter=d -z -- '*.py' |
xargs -0 black
note that this will potentially miss some files that the pre-commit framework will find -- for example extensionless executables with a python shebang, or other files which are conventionally python such as a .pdbrc
for what it's worth, with pre-commit you can use the local+system escape hatch to avoid downloading tools (if you have them already installed)
for example:
repos:
- repo: local
hooks:
- id: black-system
name: black (system)
entry: black
types: [python]
language: system
require_serial: true
that said, this largely defeats the main purposes of the framework in that it no longer is managing the installation of the tools (so you'll have to set them up manually yourself)
notably, if you don't have black installed you'll see something like:
$ pre-commit run --all-files
black (system)...........................................................Failed
- hook id: black-system
- exit code: 1
Executable `black` not found
disclaimer, I'm the maintainer of pre-commit
How can I delete "file1.txt" from my repository?
Use git rm.
If you want to remove the file from the Git repository and the filesystem, use:
git rm file1.txt
git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
But if you want to remove the file only from the Git repository and not remove it from the filesystem, use:
git rm --cached file1.txt
git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
And to push changes to remote repo
git push origin branch_name
git rm file.txt removes the file from the repo but also deletes it from the local file system.
To remove the file from the repo and not delete it from the local file system use:
git rm --cached file.txt
The below exact situation is where I use git to maintain version control for my business's website, but the "mickey" directory was a tmp folder to share private content with a CAD developer. When he needed HUGE files, I made a private, unlinked directory and ftpd the files there for him to fetch via browser. Forgetting I did this, I later performed a git add -A from the website's base directory. Subsequently, git status showed the new files needing committing. Now I needed to delete them from git's tracking and version control...
Sample output below is from what just happened to me, where I unintentionally deleted the .003 file. Thankfully, I don't care what happened to the local copy to .003, but some of the other currently changed files were updates I just made to the website and would be epic to have been deleted on the local file system! "Local file system" = the live website (not a great practice, but is reality).
[~/www]$ git rm shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
error: 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003' has local modifications
(use --cached to keep the file, or -f to force removal)
[~/www]$ git rm -f shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
rm 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003'
[~/www]$
[~/www]$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# deleted: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
#
# Changed but not updated:
# (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
# (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
# modified: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001
# modified: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$ ls shop/mickey/mtt_flange_S*
shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001 shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$
[~/www]$
[~/www]$ git rm --cached shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
rm 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002'
[~/www]$ ls shop/mickey/mtt_flange_S*
shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001 shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$
[~/www]$
[~/www]$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# deleted: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
# deleted: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
#
# Changed but not updated:
# modified: shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001
[~/www]$
Update: This answer is getting some traffic, so I thought I'd mention my other Git answer shares a couple of great resources: This page has a graphic that help demystify Git for me. The "Pro Git" book is online and helps me a lot.
First, if you are using git rm, especially for multiple files, consider any wildcard will be resolved by the shell, not by the git command.
git rm -- *.anExtension
git commit -m "remove multiple files"
But, if your file is already on GitHub, you can (since July 2013) directly delete it from the web GUI!
Simply view any file in your repository, click the trash can icon at the top, and commit the removal just like any other web-based edit.
Then "git pull" on your local repo, and that will delete the file locally too.
Which makes this answer a (roundabout) way to delete a file from git repo?
(Not to mention that a file on GitHub is in a "git repo")
(the commit will reflect the deletion of that file):
And just like that, it’s gone.
For help with these features, be sure to read our help articles on creating, moving, renaming, and deleting files.
Note: Since it’s a version control system, Git always has your back if you need to recover the file later.
The last sentence means that the deleted file is still part of the history, and you can restore it easily enough (but not yet through the GitHub web interface):
See "Restore a deleted file in a Git repo".
This is the only option that worked for me.
git filter-branch -f --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch *.sql'
Note: Replace *.sql with your file name or file type. Be very careful because this will go through every commit and rip this file type out.
EDIT:
pay attention - after this command you will not be able to push or pull - you will see the reject of 'unrelated history' you can use 'git push --force -u origin master' to push or pull
Additionally, if it's a folder to be removed and it's subsequent child folders or files, use:
git rm -r foldername
More generally, git help will help with at least simple questions like this:
zhasper#berens:/media/Kindle/documents$ git help
usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [--html-path] [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]
The most commonly used git commands are:
add Add file contents to the index
:
rm Remove files from the working tree and from the index
If you want to delete the file from the repo, but leave it in the the file system (will be untracked):
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git rm --cached file1.txt
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt from the repo"
If you want to delete the file from the repo and from the file system then there are two options:
If the file has no changes staged in the index:
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git rm file1.txt
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
If the file has changes staged in the index:
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git rm -f file1.txt
bykov#gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
git rm will only remove the file on this branch from now on, but it remains in history and git will remember it.
The right way to do it is with git filter-branch, as others have mentioned here. It will rewrite every commit in the history of the branch to delete that file.
But, even after doing that, git can remember it because there can be references to it in reflog, remotes, tags and such.
If you want to completely obliterate it in one step, I recommend you to use git forget-blob
https://ownyourbits.com/2017/01/18/completely-remove-a-file-from-a-git-repository-with-git-forget-blob/
It is easy, just do git forget-blob file1.txt.
This will remove every reference, do git filter-branch, and finally run the git garbage collector git gc to completely get rid of this file in your repo.
Note: if you want to delete file only from git use below:
git rm --cached file1.txt
If you want to delete also from hard disk:
git rm file1.txt
If you want to remove a folder(the folder may contain few files) so, you should remove using recursive command, as below:
git rm -r foldername
If you want to remove a folder inside another folder
git rm -r parentFolder/childFolder
Then, you can commit and push as usual. However, if you want to recover deleted folder, you can follow this: recover deleted files from git is possible.
From doc:
git rm [-f | --force] [-n] [-r] [--cached] [--ignore-unmatch] [--quiet] [--] <file>…
OPTIONS
<file>…
Files to remove. Fileglobs (e.g. *.c) can be given to remove all matching files. If you want Git to expand file glob characters, you
may need to shell-escape them. A leading directory name (e.g. dir to
remove dir/file1 and dir/file2) can be given to remove all files in
the directory, and recursively all sub-directories, but this requires
the -r option to be explicitly given.
-f
--force
Override the up-to-date check.
-n
--dry-run
Don’t actually remove any file(s). Instead, just show if they exist in the index and would otherwise be removed by the command.
-r
Allow recursive removal when a leading directory name is given.
--
This option can be used to separate command-line options from the list of files, (useful when filenames might be mistaken for
command-line options).
--cached
Use this option to unstage and remove paths only from the index. Working tree files, whether modified or not, will be left alone.
--ignore-unmatch
Exit with a zero status even if no files matched.
-q
--quiet
git rm normally outputs one line (in the form of an rm command) for each file removed. This option suppresses that output.
Read more on official doc.
The answer by Greg Hewgill, that was edited by Johannchopin helped me, as I did not care about removing the file from the history completely.
In my case, it was a directory, so the only change I did was using:
git rm -r --cached myDirectoryName
instead of "git rm --cached file1.txt"
..followed by:
git commit -m "deleted myDirectoryName from git"
git push origin branch_name
Thanks Greg Hewgill and Johannchopin!
Another way if you want to delete the file from your local folder using rm command and then push the changes to the remote server.
rm file1.txt
git commit -a -m "Deleting files"
git push origin master
According to the documentation.
git rm --cached file1.txt
When it comes to sensitive data—better not say that you removed the file but rather just include it in the last known commit:
0. Amend last commit
git commit --amend -CHEAD
If you want to delete the file from all git history, according to the documentation you should do the following:
1. Remove it from your local history
git filter-branch --force --index-filter \ "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA" \ --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
# Replace PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA with the path to the file you want to remove, not just its filename
Don't forget to include this file in .gitignore (If it's a file you never want to share (such as passwords...):
echo "YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA" >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Add YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA to .gitignore"
3. If you need to remove from the remote
git push origin --force --all
4. If you also need to remove it from tag releases:
git push origin --force --tags
In my case I tried to remove file on github after few commits but save on computer
git filter-branch -f --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch file_name_with_path' HEAD
git push --force -u origin master
and later this file was ignored
To delete a specific file
git rm filename
To clean all the untracked files from a directory recursively in single shot
git clean -fdx
If you have the GitHub for Windows application, you can delete a file in 5 easy steps:
Click Sync.
Click on the directory where the file is located and select your latest version of the file.
Click on tools and select "Open a shell here."
In the shell, type: "rm {filename}" and hit enter.
Commit the change and resync.
First,Remove files from local repository.
git rm -r File-Name
or, remove files only from local repository but from filesystem
git rm --cached File-Name
Secondly, Commit changes into local repository.
git commit -m "unwanted files or some inline comments"
Finally, update/push local changes into remote repository.
git push
go to your project dir and type:
git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f <deleted-file>' HEAD
after that push --force for delete file from all commits.
git push origin --force --all
https://stackoverflow.com/a/2047477/14508423
https://stackoverflow.com/a/19666677/14508423
Quite similar, tried both. Nothing. Git keeps tracking the file. (I use vscode so the file got instantly marked as U(untracked) or A(added))
Doing this https://stackoverflow.com/a/53431148/14508423 to whole category solves the problem.
Do this to delete a file from git and make git forget about it:
**manually add the file name to .gitignore**
git rm --cached settings.py
git commit -m "remove settings.py"
git push origin master
git rm -r --cached .
git add .
git commit -m "Untrack files in .gitignore"
ps: every time it failed I tried to delete file with sensitive info like tokens (.env and settings.py files). But it works fine with random files oO
For the case where git rm doesn't suffice and the file needs to be removed from history: As the git filter-branch manual page now itself suggests using git-filter-repo, and I had to do this today, here's an example using that tool. It uses the example repo https://example/eguser/eg.git
Clone the repository into a new directory git clone https://example/eguser/eg.git
Keep everything except the unwanted file. git-filter-repo --path file1.txt --invert-paths
Add the remote repository origin back :
git remote add origin https://example/eguser/eg.git.
The git-filter-repo tool removes remote remote info by design and suggests a new remote repo (see point 4). This makes sense for big shared repos but might be overkill for getting rid a single newly added file as in this example.
When happy with the contents of local, replace remote with it.
git push --force -u origin master. Forcing is required due to the changed history.
Also note the useful --dry-run option and a good discussion in the linked manual on team and project dynamics before charging in and changing repository history.
I tried a lot of the suggested options and none appeared to work (I won't list the various problems).
What I ended up doing, which worked, was simple and intuitive (to me) was:
move the whole local repo elsewhere
clone the repo again from master to your local drive
copy back the files/folder from your original copy in #1 back into the new clone from #2
make sure that the problem large file is either not there or excluded in the .gitignore file
do the usual git add/git commit/git push
After you have removed the file from the repo with git rm you can use BFG Repo-Cleaner to completely and easily obliterate the file from the repo history.
Just by going on the file in your github repository you can see the delete icon beside Raw|Blame and don't forget to click on commit changes button. And you can see that your file has been deleted.
New answer that works in 2022.
Do not use:
git filter-branch
this command might not change the remote repo after pushing. If you clone after using it, you will see that nothing has changed and the repo still has a large size. This command is old now. For example, if you use the steps in https://github.com/18F/C2/issues/439, this won't work.
You need to use
git filter-repo
Steps:
(1) Find the largest files in .git:
git rev-list --objects --all | grep -f <(git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/*.idx| sort -k 3 -n | cut -f 1 -d " " | tail -10)
(2) Strat filtering these large files:
git filter-repo --path-glob '../../src/../..' --invert-paths --force
or
git filter-repo --path-glob '*.zip' --invert-paths --force
or
git filter-repo --path-glob '*.a' --invert-paths --force
or
whatever you find in step 1.
(3)
git remote add origin git#github.com:.../...git
(4)
git push --all --force
git push --tags --force
DONE!
I have obj and bin files that accidentally made it into the repo that I don't want polluting my 'changed files' list
After I noticed they went to the remote, I ignored them by adding this to .gitignore
/*/obj
/*/bin
Problem is they are already in the remote, and when they get changed, they pop up as changed and pollute the changed file list.
To stop seeing them, you need to delete the whole folder from the remote repository.
In a command prompt:
CD to the repo folder (i.e. C:\repos\MyRepo)
I want to delete SSIS\obj. It seems you can only delete at the top level, so you now need to CD into SSIS: (i.e. C:\repos\MyRepo\SSIS)
Now type the magic incantation git rm -r -f obj
rm=remove
-r = recursively remove
-f = means force, cause you really mean it
obj is the folder
Now run git commit -m "remove obj folder"
I got an alarming message saying 13 files changed 315222 deletions
Then because I didn't want to have to look up the CMD line, I went into Visual Sstudio and did a Sync to apply it to the remote
if your file is sensitive (for example, settings or keys you accidently added and committed) then you can remove it from all versions.
To remove from all versions use the command below (warning: careful because you won't be able to restore the removed file in the repo if do not have a copy):
Using Git
git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch file.ext' HEAD
Using git-filter-repo (get it here, new recommended way by Git)
git filter-repo --path file.ext
If you need to remove files from a determined extension (for example, compiled files) you could do the following to remove them all at once:
git remove -f *.pyc
Incase if you don't file in your local repo but in git repo, then simply open file in git repo through web interface and find Delete button at right corner in interface.
Click Here, To view interface Delete Option
I am trying to create a Docker image/container that will run on Windows 10/Linux and test a REST API. Is it possible to embed the function (from my .bashrc file) inside the DockerFile? The function pytest calls pylint before running the .py file. If the rating is not 10/10, then it prompts the user to fix the code and exits. This works fine on Linux.
Basically here is the pseudo-code inside the DockerFile I am attempting to build an image.
------------------------------------------
From: Ubuntu x.xx
install python
Install pytest
install pylint
copy test_file to the respective folder
Execute pytest test_file_name.py
if the rating is not 10\10:
prompt the user to resolve the rating issue and exit
------------here is the partial code snippet from the func------------------------
function pytest () {
argument1="$1"
# Extract the path and file name for pylint when method name is passed
pathfilename=`echo ${argument1} | sed 's/::.*//'`
clear && printf '\e[3J'
output=$(docker exec -t orch-$USER pylint -r n ${pathfilename})
if (echo "$output" | grep 'warning.*error' o&>/dev/null or
echo "${output}" | egrep 'warning|convention' &>/dev/null)
then
echo echo "${output}" | sed 's/\(warning\)/\o033[33m\1\o033[39m/;s/\(errors\|error\)/\o033[31m\1\o033[39m/'
YEL='\033[0;1;33m'
NC='\033[0m'
echo -e "\n ${YEL}Fix module as per pylint/PEP8 messages to achieve 10/10 rating before pusing to github\n${NC}"`
fi
Another option I can think of:
Step 1] Build the image (using DockerFile) with all the required software
Step 2] In a .py file, add the call for execution of pytest with the logic from the function.
Your thoughts?
You can turn that function into a standalone shell script. (Pretty much by just removing the function wrapper, and taking out the docker exec part of the tool invocation.) Once you've done that, you can COPY the shell script into your image, and once you've done that, you can RUN it.
...
COPY pylint-enforcer.sh .
RUN chmod +x ./pylint-enforcer.sh \
&& ./pylint-enforcer.sh
...
It looks like pylint will produce a non-zero exit code if it emits any messages. For purposes of a Dockerfile, it may be enough to just RUN pylint -r -n .; if it prints anything, it looks like it will return a non-zero exit code, which docker build will interpret as "failure" and not proceed.
You might consider whether you'll ever want the ability to build and push an image of code that isn't absolutely perfect (during a production-down event, perhaps), and whether you want to require root-level permissions to run simple code-validity tools (if you can docker anything you can edit arbitrary files on the host as root). I'd suggest running these tools out of a non-Docker virtual environment during your CI process, and neither place them in your Dockerfile nor depend on docker exec to run them.
Is there any way to set up Python source checking on git server side?
Something like this (this is pre-commit hook):
#!/bin/sh
FILES=$(git diff --cached --name-only --diff-filter=ACM | grep -e '\.py$')
if [ -n "$FILES" ]; then
flake8 -r $FILES
fi
but on the server side(perhaps with update hook).
You can add an update hook, that will be getting input file in format of ${ref} ${oldrev} ${newrev}, e.g. something like refs/heads/master ddf343f635fe4440cad528e12f96f28bd50aa099 f59abbf28696389c91c2697c7db31f20cfa91d8a.
Armed with this knowledge, you can then make a diff between those two commits, list files that are there, check them for syntax, and fail in case you don't like them. If there is an entirely new branch pushed, the ${oldrev} will be 40 zeroes, so you'd have to probably check all the files in the new commit.