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

user_127056 0
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I want to remove a file from my repository.

git rm file_to_remove.txt

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

remote-server delete-file git-rm repository git
13 Answers

The git rm documentation states:

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 file_to_remove.txt

and for a single directory:

git rm --cached -r directory_to_remove
user_367230

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.

user_1940440

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
user_72357740

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"
user_6316190

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).

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

It moves files from Tracked 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?

On remote, there is such thing as an , there is and that results in havoc.

Why?

When collaborating with the team, if you such changes up to remote it will delete those changes on remote and all the team who takes a from .

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 ( , will be . )

user_60731480

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.

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