Resync git repo with new .gitignore file

Question

Is it possible to \"refresh\" a git repository after updating the gitignore file?

I just added more ignorations(?) to my gitignore and would like to remove stuff alr

Answer 1

I might misunderstand, but are you trying to delete files newly ignored or do you want to ignore new modifications to these files ? In this case, the thing is working.

If you want to delete ignored files previously commited, then use

git rm –cached `git ls-files -i –exclude-standard`
git commit -m 'clean up'

Answer 2

The solution mentioned in ".gitignore file not ignoring" is a bit extreme, but should work:

# rm all files
git rm -r --cached .
# add all files as per new .gitignore
git add .
# now, commit for new .gitignore to apply
git commit -m ".gitignore is now working"

(make sure to commit first your changes you want to keep, to avoid any incident as jball037 comments below.
The --cached option will keep your files untouched on your disk though.)

You also have other more fine-grained solution in the blog post "Making Git ignore already-tracked files":

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i --exclude-standard`

---

Bassim suggests in his edit:

Files with space in their paths

In case you get an error message like fatal: path spec '...' did not match any files, there might be files with spaces in their path.

You can remove all other files with option --ignore-unmatch:

git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch `git ls-files -i --exclude-standard`

but unmatched files will remain in your repository and will have to be removed explicitly by enclosing their path with double quotes:

git rm --cached "<path.to.remaining.file>"

Answer 3

I know this is an old question, but gracchus's solution doesn't work if file names contain spaces. VonC's solution to file names with spaces is to not remove them utilizing --ignore-unmatch, then remove them manually, but this will not work well if there are a lot.

Here is a solution that utilizes bash arrays to capture all files.

# Build bash array of the file names
while read -r file; do 
    rmlist+=( "$file" )
done < <(git ls-files -i --exclude-standard)

git rm –-cached "${rmlist[@]}"

git commit -m 'ignore update'