# Really remove a file ? 6 messages from 2008-10-09 to 2008-10-10. Participants: marcreddist@aim.com, Alex Riesen, Stefan Karpinski, Björn Steinbrink. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/15838 ## marcreddist@aim.com, 2008-10-09 18:12 Subject: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: <8CAF851B91FEF07-660-20E9@webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/8CAF851B91FEF07-660-20E9%40webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com ``` Hi, I'm a new git user for some weeks or so and well i think git is awesome. I didn't read all the online docs and mans yet, but i'm already really impressed by it's power. Thanks everyone for this helpful tool. Right now i think i need some help. I started to work for a project, and everything went fine. But I noticed someone placed a huge data file in the repository. This file shouldn't have been here at the first place. So I deleted it with git-rm. But that wasn't clever because now, "git log -p" or "git log -S'something'" are really really slow. Also diffs are huge and lots of command results are hard to read. So is there a way to really remove a file in the git repository so that it never existed (I mean not having the diff in the logs and the data stored somewhere in the .git directory) ? Or if it's not the was git is supposed to be used, is there a way to hide the diff (even from git-log) or something ? Thank you again, -- Marc R. ``` ## Alex Riesen, 2008-10-09 18:56 Subject: Re: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: <81b0412b0810091156v15dea27an95050a06cfb4f8df@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/81b0412b0810091156v15dea27an95050a06cfb4f8df%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <8CAF851B91FEF07-660-20E9@webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com> ``` 2008/10/9 : > So is there a way to really remove a file in the git repository so that it > never existed (I mean not having the diff in the logs and the data stored > somewhere in the .git directory) ? Or if it's not the was git is supposed to > be used, is there a way to hide the diff (even from git-log) or something ? Yes. But you'll change the whole history (of course, it should _never_ mention the file). See git filter-branch (there is even an example at the end of its man page. Replace mv with rm) ``` ## Stefan Karpinski, 2008-10-09 23:43 Subject: Re: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/d4bc1a2a0810091643u3903a1f4h44d3579b98fe6922%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <81b0412b0810091156v15dea27an95050a06cfb4f8df@mail.gmail.com> ``` Specifically, you probably want to do something like this: $ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git update-index --remove ' --force -- --all Beware that this will make your repository effectively "incompatible" with those of others who've pulled from you before—because all of your history is now completely rewritten. You should probably have them clone a new copy from the repo you've run this on instead of trying to continue working with their old repos. Otherwise all hell breaks loose. You'll probably also want to run "git gc" on your repo to actually get rid of the huge object that was added (or does filter-branch do this automatically?). On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Alex Riesen wrote: > > 2008/10/9 : > > So is there a way to really remove a file in the git repository so that it > > never existed (I mean not having the diff in the logs and the data stored > > somewhere in the .git directory) ? Or if it's not the was git is supposed to > > be used, is there a way to hide the diff (even from git-log) or something ? > > Yes. But you'll change the whole history (of course, it should _never_ > mention the file). > See git filter-branch (there is even an example at the end of its man page. > Replace mv with rm) > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html ``` ## marcreddist@aim.com, 2008-10-10 09:38 Subject: Re: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: <8CAF8D313562BEE-1588-259E@webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/8CAF8D313562BEE-1588-259E%40webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com In-Reply-To: ``` Hi, Thank you both, that's exactly what i needed. In case someone finds this post in the future, this : > $ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git update-index --remove ' --force -- --all worked perfectly. Although, it told me that git can't work on a dirty directory so I did this : $ git add . $ git commit And after the filter-branch $ git reset --hard HEAD^ > You'll probably also want to run "git gc" on your repo to > actually get rid of the huge object that was added (or does > filter-branch do this automatically?). I'm not sure it's required by git-filter-branch alone. In this case : git-gc saves almost 5% after the file deletion it saves 4.5% before the file deletion If I run git gc before and after the git filter-branch, it saves 4.5% and then 0.2%. But maybe my tests applies to my particular environment and cannot be generalized. Thank you again for the help. Take care, Marc, happy git user. -- ``` ## Björn Steinbrink, 2008-10-10 14:32 Subject: Re: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: <20081010143249.GE3671@atjola.homenet> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20081010143249.GE3671%40atjola.homenet In-Reply-To: <8CAF8D313562BEE-1588-259E@webmail-da15.sysops.aol.com> ``` On 2008.10.10 05:38:25 -0400, marcreddist@aim.com wrote: >> You'll probably also want to run "git gc" on your repo to actually >> get rid of the huge object that was added (or does filter-branch do >> this automatically?). > > I'm not sure it's required by git-filter-branch alone. In this case : > > git-gc saves almost 5% after the file deletion > > it saves 4.5% before the file deletion > > If I run git gc before and after the git filter-branch, it saves 4.5% > and then 0.2%. Did you clear the refs/original namespace and your reflogs? Otherwise, the huge object is most likely still referenced and thus won't get pruned. Also, I usually prefer "git repack -adf" over "git gc" in such situations, but that's probably just because I don't know the right way to force "git gc" to immediately prune stuff just once. But don't do the pruning until you're absolutely sure that you don't require the old stuff anymore. Björn ``` ## Stefan Karpinski, 2008-10-10 20:50 Subject: Re: Really remove a file ? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/d4bc1a2a0810101350h17856074qfe397078b734eb85%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <20081010143249.GE3671@atjola.homenet> ``` > But don't do the pruning until you're absolutely sure that you don't > require the old stuff anymore. Or, of course, you could just keep an independent copy of the whole repo pre-filter-branch. On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 7:32 AM, Björn Steinbrink wrote: > > On 2008.10.10 05:38:25 -0400, marcreddist@aim.com wrote: > >> You'll probably also want to run "git gc" on your repo to actually > >> get rid of the huge object that was added (or does filter-branch do > >> this automatically?). > > > > I'm not sure it's required by git-filter-branch alone. In this case : > > > > git-gc saves almost 5% after the file deletion > > > > it saves 4.5% before the file deletion > > > > If I run git gc before and after the git filter-branch, it saves 4.5% > > and then 0.2%. > > Did you clear the refs/original namespace and your reflogs? Otherwise, > the huge object is most likely still referenced and thus won't get > pruned. Also, I usually prefer "git repack -adf" over "git gc" in such > situations, but that's probably just because I don't know the right > way to force "git gc" to immediately prune stuff just once. > > But don't do the pruning until you're absolutely sure that you don't > require the old stuff anymore. > > Björn > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html ```