Re: Making Git untrack few folders

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 12, 2010, 10:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20100912103717.GA24576@kytes>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTiktMe190OVPrTXMtmfaLRLXeJBZ4vSZewJecQWe@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Parag,

Parag Kalra writes:

> 1. Is there a way I can make Git not track a particular folder in my
> working code base directory. For example, I have a tmp folder in my
> local code base and I don't want Git to track whats going on inside
> that directory.

Yes. See gitignore (5).

> 2. Accidently I have added this folder, committed and pushed it to
> origin master. Is there a way I can remove this tmp folder from git
> revision history and at the same time keeping it intact in my local
> code base directory.

Yes. Simply `rm --cached` the folder, and amemd your previous commit using `commit --amend`, and perform a non-ff push using the `+` syntax. For example, to perform a non-ff push to remote branch `foo` whose local name is `foo`, invoke `push +foo:foo`. Note that other users who have already pulled the bad commit will have to forget about it explicitly too.

If the folder tracking information is a few revision deep, consider using `rebase -i` to manually overwrite those commits to exclude that folder. If the folder was too many revisions earlier, use a `filter-branch` index filter to make Git completely forget that folder.

-- Ram