从以前的所有git提交中删除.idea目录

Question

I have ~50 commits in my local Git repository. Accidentally in the initial commit, I have included .idea folder, now I have to remove all files from that folder right from the initial commit. Is it possible by any chance to achieve this?

I have tried the following commands but converting as separate commits without linking to previous commits:

$ echo '.idea' >> .gitignore
$ git rm -r --cached .idea
$ git add .gitignore
$ git commit --amend

Answer 1

You can use filter-branch to do this:

cp -r .idea .idea.bak
git filter-branch --force --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch -r .idea' --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

This will remove .idea from all past commits. After this, you can update the .gitignore file as you did, to avoid adding .idea in the future by mistake.

Note that this rewrites the history of your repository. If it's public and there are other collaborators, then think carefully if this is really worth it to do.

See more details at https://help.github.com/articles/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository/