I made the mistake of creating a gitignore file after I had already pushed an initial commit to my git repo.
My .gitignore is very simple, it only contains:
node_modules
I've tried the following:
git rm --cached -rf .
git add .
git commit 'Fix untracked files'
git push
I've also tried deleting my .git folder in my project directory and reinitializing the entire project.
Both times it still pushes my node_modules directory!
How do I fix this?
First, remove the node_modules from .gitignore file (so, .gitignore is empty now).
Clean the git cache and Delete the node_modules folder.
$ git rm -r --cached node_modules # clean git cache
$ rm -rf node_modules # delete node_modules
Do git Add, Commit, Push to remote. Now, node_modules will be removed from remote.
$ git add -A
$ git commit -m 'Delete node_modules'
$ git push origin HEAD
Add node_modules in .gitignore file, clear git cache, generate node_modules folder.
# add 'node_modules/' into .gitignore
$ git rm -r --cached node_modules
$ npm i # generate node_modules
$ git status # see if git ignores node_modules folder now
Do git Add, Commit, Push to remote. Now .gitignore contains node_modules so git will ignore the folder in future.
$ git add .
$ git commit -m 'Add node_modules in .gitignore'
$ git push origin HEAD