How can I delete a file from a Git repository?

问题

I have added a file named \"file1.txt\" to a Git repository. After that, I committed it, added a couple of directories called dir1 and dir2, and committed them to the Git repository.

Now the current repository has \"file1.txt\", dir1, and dir2. How can I delete \"file1.txt\" without affecting others, like dir1 and dir2?

回答1:

Use git rm:

git rm file1.txt
git commit -m "remove file1.txt"

But if you want to remove the file only from the Git repository and not remove it from the filesystem, use:

git rm --cached file1.txt
git commit -m "remove file1.txt"

And to push changes to remote repo

git push origin branch_name  

回答2:

git rm file.txt removes the file from the repo but also deletes it from the local file system.

To remove the file from the repo and not delete it from the local file system use:
git rm --cached file.txt

The below exact situation is where I use git to maintain version control for my business's website, but the "mickey" directory was a tmp folder to share private content with a CAD developer. When he needed HUGE files, I made a private, unlinked directory and ftpd the files there for him to fetch via browser. Forgetting I did this, I later performed a git add -A from the website's base directory. Subsequently, git status showed the new files needing committing. Now I needed to delete them from git's tracking and version control...

Sample output below is from what just happened to me, where I unintentionally deleted the .003 file. Thankfully, I don't care what happened to the local copy to .003, but some of the other currently changed files were updates I just made to the website and would be epic to have been deleted on the local file system! "Local file system" = the live website (not a great practice, but is reality).

[~/www]$ git rm shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
error: 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003' has local modifications
(use --cached to keep the file, or -f to force removal)
[~/www]$ git rm -f shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
rm 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003'
[~/www]$ 
[~/www]$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   deleted:    shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
#
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001
#   modified:   shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$ ls shop/mickey/mtt_flange_S*
shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001  shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$ 
[~/www]$ 
[~/www]$ git rm --cached shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
rm 'shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002'
[~/www]$ ls shop/mickey/mtt_flange_S*
shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001  shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
[~/www]$ 
[~/www]$ 
[~/www]$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   deleted:    shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.002
#   deleted:    shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.003
#
# Changed but not updated:
#   modified:   shop/mickey/mtt_flange_SCN.7z.001
[~/www]$

Update: This answer is getting some traffic, so I thought I'd mention my other Git answer shares a couple of great resources: This page has a graphic that help demystify Git for me. The "Pro Git" book is online and helps me a lot.

回答3:

First, if you are using git rm, especially for multiple files, consider any wildcard will be resolved by the shell, not by the git command.

git rm -- *.anExtension
git commit -m "remove multiple files"

But, if your file is already on GitHub, you can (since July 2013) directly delete it from the web GUI!

Simply view any file in your repository, click the trash can icon at the top, and commit the removal just like any other web-based edit.

Then "git pull" on your local repo, and that will delete the file locally too.
Which makes this answer a (roundabout) way to delete a file from git repo?
(Not to mention that a file on GitHub is in a "git repo")

---

(the commit will reflect the deletion of that file):

And just like that, it’s gone.

For help with these features, be sure to read our help articles on creating, moving, renaming, and deleting files.

Note: Since it’s a version control system, Git always has your back if you need to recover the file later.

The last sentence means that the deleted file is still part of the history, and you can restore it easily enough (but not yet through the GitHub web interface):

See "Restore a deleted file in a Git repo".

回答4:

This is the only option that worked for me.

git filter-branch -f --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch *.sql'

Note: Replace *.sql with your file name or file type. Be very careful because this will go through every commit and rip this file type out.

EDIT: pay attention - after this command you will not be able to push or pull - you will see the reject of 'unrelated history' you can use 'git push --force -u origin master' to push or pull

回答5:

Additionally, if it's a folder to be removed and it's subsequent child folders or files, use:

git rm -r foldername

回答6:

More generally, git help will help with at least simple questions like this:

zhasper@berens:/media/Kindle/documents$ git help
usage: git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [--html-path] [-p|--paginate|--no-pager] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--work-tree=GIT_WORK_TREE] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]

The most commonly used git commands are:
   add        Add file contents to the index
   :
   rm         Remove files from the working tree and from the index

回答7:

If you want to delete the file from the repo, but leave it in the the file system (will be untracked):

bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git rm --cached file1.txt
bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt from the repo"

If you want to delete the file from the repo and from the file system then there are two options:

1. If the file has no changes staged in the index:

   bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git rm file1.txt
   bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
   

2. If the file has changes staged in the index:

   bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git rm -f file1.txt
   bykov@gitserver:~/temp> git commit -m "remove file1.txt"
   

回答8:

git rm will only remove the file on this branch from now on, but it remains in history and git will remember it.

The right way to do it is with git filter-branch, as others have mentioned here. It will rewrite every commit in the history of the branch to delete that file.

But, even after doing that, git can remember it because there can be references to it in reflog, remotes, tags and such.

If you want to completely obliterate it in one step, I recommend you to use git forget-blob

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

It is easy, just do git forget-blob file1.txt.

This will remove every reference, do git filter-branch, and finally run the git garbage collector git gc to completely get rid of this file in your repo.

回答9:

Another way if you want to delete the file from your local folder using rm command and then push the changes to the remote server.

rm file1.txt

git commit -a -m "Deleting files"

git push origin master

回答10:

Note: if you want to delete file only from git use below:

git rm --cached file1.txt

If you want to delete also from hard disk:

git rm file1.txt

If you want to remove a folder(the folder may contain few files) so, you should remove using recursive command, as below:

git rm -r foldername

If you want to remove a folder inside another folder

git rm -r parentFolder/childFolder

Then, you can commit and push as usual. However, if you want to recover deleted folder, you can follow this: recover deleted files from git is possible.

From doc:

git rm [-f | --force] [-n] [-r] [--cached] [--ignore-unmatch] [--quiet] [--] <file>…​

OPTIONS

<file>…​

Files to remove. Fileglobs (e.g. *.c) can be given to remove all matching files. If you want Git to expand file glob characters, you

may need to shell-escape them. A leading directory name (e.g. dir to remove dir/file1 and dir/file2) can be given to remove all files in the directory, and recursively all sub-directories, but this requires the -r option to be explicitly given. -f --force

Override the up-to-date check.

-n --dry-run

Don’t actually remove any file(s). Instead, just show if they exist in the index and would otherwise be removed by the command.

-r

Allow recursive removal when a leading directory name is given.

--

This option can be used to separate command-line options from the list of files, (useful when filenames might be mistaken for

command-line options). --cached

Use this option to unstage and remove paths only from the index. Working tree files, whether modified or not, will be left alone.

--ignore-unmatch

Exit with a zero status even if no files matched.

-q --quiet

git rm normally outputs one line (in the form of an rm command) for each file removed. This option suppresses that output.

Read more on official doc.

回答11:

To delete a specific file

git rm filename

To clean all the untracked files from a directory recursively in single shot

git clean -fdx

回答12:

If you have the GitHub for Windows application, you can delete a file in 5 easy steps:

• Click Sync.
• Click on the directory where the file is located and select your latest version of the file.
• Click on tools and select "Open a shell here."
• In the shell, type: "rm {filename}" and hit enter.
• Commit the change and resync.

回答13:

In my case I tried to remove file on github after few commits but save on computer

git filter-branch -f --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch file_name_with_path' HEAD
git push --force -u origin master

and later this file was ignored

回答14:

1. First,Remove files from local repository.

   git rm -r File-Name

   or, remove files only from local repository but from filesystem

   git rm --cached File-Name

2. Secondly, Commit changes into local repository.

   git commit -m "unwanted files or some inline comments"   
   

3. Finally, update/push local changes into remote repository.

   git push 
   

回答15:

I tried a lot of the suggested options and none appeared to work (I won't list the various problems). What I ended up doing, which worked, was simple and intuitive (to me) was:

1. move the whole local repo elsewhere
2. clone the repo again from master to your local drive
3. copy back the files/folder from your original copy in #1 back into the new clone from #2
4. make sure that the problem large file is either not there or excluded in the .gitignore file
5. do the usual git add/git commit/git push

回答16:

After you have removed the file from the repo with git rm you can use BFG Repo-Cleaner to completely and easily obliterate the file from the repo history.

回答17:

I have obj and bin files that accidentally made it into the repo that I don't want polluting my 'changed files' list

After I noticed they went to the remote, I ignored them by adding this to .gitignore

/*/obj
/*/bin

Problem is they are already in the remote, and when they get changed, they pop up as changed and pollute the changed file list.

To stop seeing them, you need to delete the whole folder from the remote repository.

In a command prompt:

1. CD to the repo folder (i.e. C:\repos\MyRepo)
2. I want to delete SSIS\obj. It seems you can only delete at the top level, so you now need to CD into SSIS: (i.e. C:\repos\MyRepo\SSIS)
3. Now type the magic incantation git rm -r -f obj
   • rm=remove
   • -r = recursively remove
   • -f = means force, cause you really mean it
   • obj is the folder
4. Now run git commit -m "remove obj folder"

I got an alarming message saying 13 files changed 315222 deletions

Then because I didn't want to have to look up the CMD line, I went into Visual Sstudio and did a Sync to apply it to the remote

回答18:

If you need to remove files from a determined extension (for example, compiled files) you could do the following to remove them all at once:

git remove -f *.pyc

回答19:

Incase if you don't file in your local repo but in git repo, then simply open file in git repo through web interface and find Delete button at right corner in interface. Click Here, To view interface Delete Option

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2047465/how-can-i-delete-a-file-from-a-git-repository