How to remove files that are listed in the .gitignore but still on the repository?
git, gitignore, ignore
Solution
You can remove them from the repository manually:
git rm --cached file1 file2 dir/file3
Or, if you have a lot of files:
git rm --cached `git ls-files -i -c --exclude-from=.gitignore`
But this doesn't seem to work in Git Bash on Windows. It produces an error message. The following works better:
git ls-files -i -c --exclude-from=.gitignore | xargs git rm --cached
In PowerShell on Windows this works even better (handles spaces in path and filenames):
git ls-files -i -c --exclude-from=.gitignore | %{git rm --cached $_}
Regarding rewriting the whole history without these files, I highly doubt there's an automatic way to do it. And we all know that rewriting the history is bad, don't we? :)
Problem
I have some files in my repository that should be ignored, i added them to the .gitignore but, of course, they are not removed from my repository. So my question is, is there a magic command or script using filter-branch that can rewrite my history and remove all these files easily? Or simply a command that will create a commit that will remove them ?