I am learning Git and am unable to understand under what condition the -f flag is used while issuing the "git rm" command. Please explain a scenario where rm -f would be required instead of rm only?
Explanation:
The -f
is used to remove a file if the file is not up to date with your last checked out commit. It is to prevent you from removing a file that you have made changes to, but have not yet checked them in.
Example:
You check out commit 0a12d4 that contains the file sample.txt. Before you change any files, you could remove the sample.txt with git rm sample.txt
. However, once you make a change to sample.txt, you would need to use git rm -f sample.txt
to remove the file
If you try to git rm
a file that has unstaged changes, it fails if you don't provide the -f
flag:
$ git rm a.txt
error: 'a.txt' has local modifications
(use --cached to keep the file, or -f to force removal)
If you edit a file, and then realize you want to delete it instead.
$ ls func.c $ vim func.c ...edit the file...
Now that I think about it, I actually want to delete it...
$ git rm func.c error: 'func.c' has local modifications (use --cached to keep the file, or -f to force removal) $ git rm -f func.c
来源:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8130954/when-is-git-rm-f-used