Remove sensitive files and their commits from Git history

Question

I would like to put a Git project on GitHub but it contains certain files with sensitive data (usernames and passwords, like /config/deploy.rb for capistrano).

I kno

Answer 1

I recommend this script by David Underhill, worked like a charm for me.

It adds these commands in addition natacado's filter-branch to clean up the mess it leaves behind:

rm -rf .git/refs/original/
git reflog expire --all
git gc --aggressive --prune

Full script (all credit to David Underhill)

#!/bin/bash
set -o errexit

# Author: David Underhill
# Script to permanently delete files/folders from your git repository.  To use 
# it, cd to your repository's root and then run the script with a list of paths
# you want to delete, e.g., git-delete-history path1 path2

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    exit 0
fi

# make sure we're at the root of git repo
if [ ! -d .git ]; then
    echo "Error: must run this script from the root of a git repository"
    exit 1
fi

# remove all paths passed as arguments from the history of the repo
files=$@
git filter-branch --index-filter \
"git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch $files" HEAD

# remove the temporary history git-filter-branch
# otherwise leaves behind for a long time
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ && \
git reflog expire --all && \
git gc --aggressive --prune

The last two commands may work better if changed to the following:

git reflog expire --expire=now --all && \
git gc --aggressive --prune=now