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Remove a file from a Git repository without deleting it from the local filesystem

My initial commit contained some log files. I've added *log to my .gitignore, and now I want to remove the log files from my repository.

git rm mylogfile.log

will remove a file from the repository, but will also remove it from the local file system. How can I remove this file from the repo without deleting my local copy of the file?

It's worth noting that the most upvoted answer is dangerous for some. If you are using a remote repo than when you push your local then pull elsewhere those files you removed from git only WILL BE DELETED. This is mentioned in one of the replies but not commented upon.
Critical warning: Please read this answer before pasting accepted answer. stackoverflow.com/a/67793572/6073148

S
Sam

From the man file:

When --cached is given, the staged content has to match either the tip of the branch or the file on disk, allowing the file to be removed from just the index.

So, for a single file:

git rm --cached mylogfile.log

and for a single directory:

git rm --cached -r mydirectory

Easily missed because it is not as self explanatory as svn rm --keep-local.
But how do I preserve the files on remote servers? This keeps my local one, but if I push and pull from another server, the file gets deleted. I also added a .gitignore for the file, but it still get's removed
This still removes the files on git pull if you are behind the commit after git rm
Worth noting that, after running the command in the answer, you need to use git commit -m "Commit message" and git push. If you have any other staged changes (check with git status), they will also be committed at this time.
Since this is the most accepted answer and doesn't do, what is asked for, i'll tell what I do. I use the command git rm --cached mylogfile.log and delete the file from the repository. To avoid losing the file on productive system i do a backup of the file and pull after this. The file get's deleted as mentioned before and need to be copied back from your backup. This is quite a pain, but i found no better solution for this problem.
k
konsolenfreddy

To remove an entire folder from the repo (like Resharper files), do this:

git rm -r --cached folderName

I had committed some resharper files, and did not want those to persist for other project users.


Just an added note for future visitors: Don't use a GUI to "Sync" the commit back to the repo. That will pull the files back down into your local repo. You have to do a Git Push repo branch to actually remove the files from the remote.
B
Bruno Brant

You can also remove files from the repository based on your .gitignore without deleting them from the local file system :

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i -X .gitignore`

Or, alternatively, on Windows Powershell:

git rm --cached $(git ls-files -i -X .gitignore)

Does not work on Windows. git ls-files -i -X .gitignore works, but I dont know how to send the files to 'git rm'. Do you know how to do that?
Works on Windows if you use Git Bash instead of cmd-console
Love this. Worked except that I had some files that ended up having spaces in filename. I modified solution here to this: git ls-files -i -X .gitignore | xargs -I{} git rm --cached "{}". Please consider modifying or adding this solution to the answer here, because it is a great tool to have...
I didn't try but it should be tested will it remove also files like .gitkeep which preserves an empty folder in repository. Eg. .gitignore contain folder uploads and repo is forced to keep track of .gitkeep. By removing all from repo under uploads it will remove also .gitkeep.
This suggestion worked perfectly in powershell: git rm --cached $(git ls-files -i -X .gitignore)
C
Community

As per my Answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6313126/how-to-remove-a-directory-in-my-github-repository

To remove folder/directory or file only from git repository and not from the local try 3 simple steps.

Steps to remove directory

git rm -r --cached File-or-FolderName
git commit -m "Removed folder from repository"
git push origin master

Steps to ignore that folder in next commits

To ignore that folder from next commits make one file in root named .gitignore and put that folders name into it. You can put as many as you want

.gitignore file will be look like this

/FolderName

https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJYfF.png


Will this delete other people's local files when they pull down your changes though?
M
Math Bob

A more generic solution:

Edit .gitignore file. echo mylogfile.log >> .gitignore Remove all items from index. git rm -r -f --cached . Rebuild index. git add . Make new commit git commit -m "Removed mylogfile.log"


Will this actually delete the file ?
From GitHub? NO. If you have already pushed to github it will not remove it from the site. But it will update your local git repository.
The comment you deleted was more eliminated actually :) The problem with the solution rm --cashed is that it will eventually delete the file when one pulls - right ? And this is not what people want when they say "Remove a file from the repository without deleting it from the local filesystem". Now why was the solution above accepted is beyond me - probably the OP was working alone and never pulled ? Dunno. I understand the github "once pushed always there" issue ofc
I don't think there is a 100% solution unless you ask github itself. For now stick to this. Copy file, Add to gitignore, do actual git rm -r, commit, push, restore file. Did you manage to find another solution?
My problem is not github - it is that the file will actually be deleted from coworkers when they pull. I don't want the file to be deleted. This has caused me huge issues in the past. So I was wondering if there is really a solution that really does not delete the file. See also the comment inn the accepted answer : stackoverflow.com/questions/1143796/…
B
BoD

Also, if you have commited sensitive data (e.g. a file containing passwords), you should completely delete it from the history of the repository. Here's a guide explaining how to do that: http://help.github.com/remove-sensitive-data/


This answer should include the required commands to complete this task instead of linking to another website.
I would also note that I found using the git bfg repo cleaner tool easier and faster.
R
Rystraum

Git lets you ignore those files by assuming they are unchanged. This is done by running the git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file.txt command. Once marking a file as such, git will completely ignore any changes on that file; they will not show up when running git status or git diff, nor will they ever be committed.

(From https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files)

Hence, not deleting it, but ignoring changes to it forever. I think this only works locally, so co-workers can still see changes to it unless they run the same command as above. (Still need to verify this though.)

Note: This isn't answering the question directly, but is based on follow up questions in the comments of the other answers.


Hm, I do this but I see that the file can be overwritten if someone else makes changes to it on the repo.
A
Afraz Ahmad

If you want to just untrack a file and not delete from local and remote repo then use this command:

git update-index --assume-unchanged  file_name_with_path

While this is a good answer, it's important to note this doesn't "untrack" a file in the sense that people usually use that word with Git, where an untracked file is one that isn't in the repository history and never has been. What this answer does is keep the file in the repository but prevent Git from noticing that changes have been made to it. That has some significant differences -- most importantly, the file is still present for others, and if someone else makes changes to it and you pull, your local copy can be overwritten without confirmation.
A
Arthur Bowers

Ignore the files, remove the files from git, update git (for the removal).

Note : this does not deal with history for sensitive information.

This process definitely takes some undertanding of what is going on with git. Over time, having gained that, I've learned to do processes such as:

1) Ignore the files

Add or update the project .gitignore to ignore them - in many cases such as yours, the parent directory, e.g. log/ will be the regex to use.

commit and push that .gitignore file change (not sure if push needed mind you, no harm if done).

2) Remove the files from git (only).

Now remove the files from git (only) with git rm --cached some_dir/

Check that they still remain locally (they should!).

3) Add and commit that change (essentially this is a change to "add" deleting stuff, despite the otherwise confusing "add" command!)

git add .

git commit -m"removal"


see this questions for details of why this is a bad answer: stackoverflow.com/questions/57418769/…
S
Samuel Philipp

Above answers didn't work for me. I used filter-branch to remove all committed files.

Remove a file from a git repository with:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm  file'

Remove a folder from a git repository with:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory'

This removes the directory or file from all the commits.

You can specify a commit by using:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory' HEAD

Or an range:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf vendor/gems' t49dse..HEAD

To push everything to remote, you can do:

git push origin master --force

This combined with git rm -r --cached NAME is the trick to remove it from your local git repo and prevent it from affecting anyone who pulls later (by deleting history of the file or directory from git.)
This rewrites git history and you would need to push --force after, this is a bit out of scope with the question I guess. On a public famous repo you can't just change the history line like that as everyone having already cloned the repo would get issues when pulling.
From the man page "git filter-branch has a plethora of pitfalls .... Please use an alternative history filtering tool such as git filter-repo". Also, if you are going to rewrite history, I guess you could modify the ignore file at an early age so that the removed item(s) are ignored throughout the new history?
Z
Zahid Khan

I would like to add to the accepted answer of @bdonlan.

DON'T USE THIS ANSWER TO REMOVE FILE(S) THAT EXISTS ON REMOTE.

git rm --cached filename

What the answer is supposed to do?

It is supposed to remove some files from the local staged area that you have mistakenly committed in some previous commit(s).

And have not pushed to the remote. And if pushed on remote, others don't care about those changes.

It moves files from Tracked 𝐭𝐨 Untracked state by that what I mean is, it deletes the files and adds them again.

So, git doesn't know about them anymore.

What could go wrong?

Why?

Summary: You removed files from staged and then pushed them will result in the deletion of files on the collaborating team's local repository as well (𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘷𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮𝘴 𝘪𝘵 will be 𝘨𝘰𝘯𝘦. )


Without an alternate solution, this is a (very important) comment but not an answer.
But, doesn't git keep a history to this file? I mean, we could always revert back?
@RaynalGobel yes git has all the history available and you can revert back anytime. But the thing is should you do it? Like you delete your collaborator's file while you have that file available locally? In my case, the lead trusts me and merges my PR blindly. The application wasn't working on his machine while it was working on mine. Think about this scenario!
D
Dharman

This depends on what you mean by 'remove' from git. :)

You can unstage a file using git rm --cached see for more details. When you unstage something, it means that it is no longer tracked, but this does not remove the file from previous commits.

If you want to do more than unstage the file, for example to remove sensitive data from all previous commits you will want to look into filtering the branch using tools like the BFG Repo-Cleaner.


h
hj yan

since rm --cache will delete files in the remote repository, you could use update-index instead
see: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/repos/git/ignore-files?view=azure-devops&tabs=visual-studio-2019