From: Michael J Gruber <michaeljgruber+gmane@fastmail.fm>
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:52:26 GMT
Subject: Re: Removing some files from history
Message-ID: <48F86E6A.7080102@fastmail.fm>
In-Reply-To: <96ed5eac0810170338s292fe858s1c092428a44a7ad2@mail.gmail.com>

Gennady Kushnir venit, vidit, dixit 17.10.2008 12:38:
> Hello all
> I'm not yet subscribed, but I wish I shall get reply anyway
> 
> I'm going to make my repository public, but I have found that one of
> my files contains some private data that I would not like to share.
> Is it possible to remove that file from all commits in my local
> repository history before publishing it?
> Or it would be easier to start publishing with just my current state
> (whith all private data cleaned up)?
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Gennady
Use

git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached secret' -- --all

or

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f secret' -- --all

where 'secret' is the name of the file to be removed.

After that, make sure you clean up your repo before publishing:
Clean out the original references (command on 1 line):

git for-each-ref  --format='%(refname)' refs/original |while read ref;
do git update-ref -d $ref;done

Clean out the reflog:

git reflog --expire=0 expire

Remove the old objects and packs:

git prune
git repack -adf

[Makes me feel this should be easier.]

Michael