Removing unwanted files from history including all refs with filter-branch

Question

I recently have cloned an SVN repository which used to have a few binaries in it, which are not needed any longer. Unfortunately, I have already pushed it to Github with the binaries inlcuded. I now want to remove these using 'git filter-branch' but I am facing some problems when it comes to tags and branches. Basically, I have created a simple shell script to remove a list of files which have been determined by the following command: ``` git rev-list --objects --all | grep .jar > files.txt ``` The script for removal looks like the following: ``` #!/bin/sh while read file_hash file_to_remove do echo "Removing "$file_to_remove; git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch $file_to_remove" rm -rf .git/refs/original/; git reflog expire --all --expire-unreachable=0; git repack -A -d; git prune done < $1 ``` I have a few tags (all listed in .git/packed-refs), one .git/refs/remotes/origin (pointing to the Github repo). The removal of the files using the above script do…

Accepted Answer

I ended up using the BFG Repo Cleaner on a bare cloned repository (git clone --mirror repo-url). It goes through every branch/tag, leaving each working and it is even much faster than filter-branch. Hope this helps other people having similar issues.

Here is my wrapper script:

```
#!/bin/bash
#usage: ./remove_files.sh file_list.txt bare-repo-dir
while read file_hash file_to_remove
do
    echo "Removing "$file_to_remove;
    lastFile=`echo $file_to_remove | awk -F/ '{print $NF}'`;
    java -jar bfg.jar --delete-files $lastFile $2;
done < $1

cd $2;
git gc --prune=now --aggressive;
cd ..;
```

Removing unwanted files from history including all refs with filter-branch

Solution

Problem