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

You can use git forget-blob.

The usage is pretty simple git forget-blob file-to-forget. You can get more info here

https://ownyourbits.com/2017/01/18/completely-remove-a-file-from-a-git-repository-with-git-forget-blob/

It will disappear from all the commits in your history, reflog, tags and so on

I run into the same problem every now and then, and everytime I have to come back to this post and others, that's why I automated the process.

Credits to contributors from Stack Overflow that allowed me to put this together