Re: removing files from history but not filesystem

From: Christof Krüger <git@christof-krueger.de>
Date: Jun 29, 2011, 06:08 UTC
Message-ID: <1309327707.2417.49.camel@oxylap>
In-Reply-To: <D56E9579-BD93-42AC-BA45-E0DC20F4BB48@uab.edu>

Hi

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> Thanks for the reply Chris. It worked for me. I am not following last
>  command "git reset <branch-name>" though. I have used SHA1 commit
>  object names in 'git reset' command, but I am not sure how <commit> is
>  using branch name here. Is  it because branch is a commit pointer in
>  the git history?

While being on the master branch, issuing "git reset temp" tells git to "let the master branch point to wherever the symbolic reference temp points now". You did something very similar with git filter-branch already. There you specified HEAD~1, which is the same as telling git to dereference the symbolic ref "HEAD" and take its first parent. I don't know any place where git wouldn't accept symbolic references instead of raw sha1 sums.

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> Also, how do I specify rev-list HEAD-1 so that 'git rm' will be run on
>  all commits excepts latest commit? Following didn't work for me, so I
>  guess I am not following syntax here.
>  {{{ $ git filter-branch
>  --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch apple' HEAD~1
> Which ref do you want to rewrite?
>  }}}

git filter-branch expects a symbolic reference within the rev-list. It would be pointless to filter the commits without a symbolic reference being bent over to point to the rewritten branch once done.

What you can do is the following:

git filter-branch --index-filter 'test $GIT_COMMIT = 35644cb5fa34e033593f6f0d27c332443b6867d8 || git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch foo' HEAD

If "test $GIT_COMMIT = <sha1>" is true, the following git rm command won't be executed for that commit. Choose the hash to be the one you want to skip (HEAD).

Another possible way would be to create a temporary branch to point at HEAD^, filter-branch it, then add a graft to stitch the remaining commit on top of it, then filter-branch HEAD and then remove the branch. But this is a bit advanced for the case where you just want to omit one commit.

Regards,
  Chris