Re: removing files from history but not filesystem

On Jun 28, 2011, at 2:04 AM, Christof Krüger wrote:

Hi,

quoted

$ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch
*/one.txt' HEAD

The following should work:

git branch temp
git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch foo' temp
git reset temp

This creates branch "temp" pointing to the same commit as "master".
Then you filter-branch the "temp" branch. This leaves file "foo" in your
working directory intact, as your current branch is actually "master". The
third step resets your current "branch" to the commit pointed by the
rewritten branch "temp". The default for git reset is --mixed which
according to the man page leaves the working tree alone.

Thanks for the reply Chris. It worked for me. I am not following last command "git reset <branch-name>" though. I have used SHA1 commit object names in 'git reset' command, but I am not sure how <commit> is using branch name here. Is  it because branch is a commit pointer in the git history? 

Also, how do I specify rev-list HEAD-1 so that 'git rm' will be run on all commits excepts latest commit? Following didn't work for me, so I guess I am not following syntax here.  
{{{
$ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch apple' HEAD~1
Which ref do you want to rewrite?
}}}


Any help? 

--
Thanks,
Shantanu.