Comments on: git: forever remove files or folders from history

By: Tom Harada

Tom Harada — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 09:28:42 +0000

As sort of a follow up in case it helps anyone else. I recently started using git again, and basically needed to remove a bunch of binary files that I’d added via ‘git add . / git commit’

The key for me (having read the ‘git magic’ tutorial also) is to remember that you can remove files from off the head of the repository but still keep them in your working directory (via ‘git rm –cached … / git commit’).

Once they’re gone from the repository, you can then invoke ‘git-remove-history …’ with the files (which still exist) and they will be cleanly removed from your .git repo…

At any rate, thanks a lot for this script! Pushes me over the threshold to adopting git again….

By: Mark Dodwell

Mark Dodwell — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:30:46 +0000

Awesome, thanks!

By: David Underhill

David Underhill — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:32:52 +0000

@Ernest Yes, it removes the files from all of your repository's history -- including the head of the repository.

By: Phil Lawrence

Phil Lawrence — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 08:39:38 +0000

Add some escaped quotes to deal with paths and filenames with spaces in them:

git filter-branch –index-filter “git rm -rf –cached –ignore-unmatch \”${files}\”" HEAD

By: Ernest

Ernest — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:34:45 +0000

I tried this script under msysgit (Windows).

It runs and removes files from history, BUT ALSO THE ORIGINAL FILES from my working directory!

Is this intended behavior?

Or maybe a problem with msysgit?

By: Carl van Tonder

Carl van Tonder — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:35:18 +0000

@jovo
You need to run it with the actual name of the file — if you save it as ‘git-delete-history.sh’ then you need to run it, as David says, with

./git-delete-history.sh test1

Note the addition of ‘.sh’.

David: Thanks so much for this script. I committed a 255MB file and almost immediately realised what a bad move that was, but it’s now fixed. Yay!

By: jovo

jovo — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 15:00:59 +0000

no dice

any other ideas?

maybe i could save this file in some folder that’s already in my path (i don’t know which folders are in my path)?

thanks again

By: David Underhill

David Underhill — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:07:55 +0000

@jovo
It looks like you need to specify the path to the script too. Since it is in the folder you are currently in, try

./git-delete-history test1

(or alternatively, you could do

bash git-delete-history test1

By: jovo

jovo — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:55:42 +0000

i need a bit of help. i get:

$ git-delete-history test1
zsh: command not found: git-delete-history

i’m running mac osx, git version 1.5.x, the file called git-remove-history.sh is in the current folder.
i also tried typying git-remove-history test1, but that didn’t work either.

many thanks for any tips….

By: Git Script to Show Largest Pack Objects and Trim Your Waist Line! « Stubbisms – Tony’s Weblog

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:15:31 +0000

[...] to David Underhill for the inspiration, and the various posts on the git mailing [...]