git：从所有历史记录中删除文件和目录，但保留所有分支（不仅是master分支）

Question

I tried this tutorial to delete some sensitive files and directories from my Git history. However, at the end, my new repository only had 1 branch: the master branch.

How is possible to delete files and directories from Git history while keeping all branches?

Thank you!

commands I used (from the tutorial):

cd /tmp 

git clone https://MY_GIT_REPOSITORY.git workingrepo

cd workingrepo

for branch in `git branch -a | grep remotes | grep -v HEAD | grep -v master`; do

git branch --track ${branch##*/} $branch 

done 

git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch FILE_LIST' --prune-empty -f -- --all 

rm -rf .git/refs/original/ 

git reflog expire --expire=now --all 

git gc --aggressive --prune=now

Answer 1

From what you've posted, that should have worked. The:

 for branch in `git branch -a | grep remotes | grep -v HEAD | grep -v master`; do git branch --track ${branch##*/} $branch done 

sequence should create a branch for each branch in the original repository. If you examine the set of branches afterward, you should see the right names. (This method is a bit clumsy compared to just using git clone --mirror for the initial clone, but sometimes there are reasons to avoid --mirror , which makes a bare clone.)

The filter-branch operation (lines split for posting purposes here):

 git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat \\ --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch FILE_LIST' \\ --prune-empty -f -- --all 

should then operate on all branches ( --all at the end); the index filter will remove a file named FILE_LIST (presumably this is short for the actual list of files), and you should see a lot of progress messages plus a list of branch names that filter-branch updated.

You can examine the branch names again at this point; they should be the same names as before (though the commit hashes to which they point may, and usually will, differ).

The remaining commands do some cleanup. The --aggressive is unnecessary (see Linus Torvalds' explanation here ) but using git gc or re-cloning are appropriate for discarding the unwanted objects. These will have no effect on branch names, so those two particular points are where to check why something has gone wrong.