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

Use filter-branch:

git filter-branch --force --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch *file_path_relative_to_git_repo*' --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

git push origin *branch_name* -f