git filter-branch --index-filter'git rm…'对克隆的存储库有什么影响

Question

I have recently extracted a few subdirectories from a shared git repository with
git filter-branch --subdirectory-filter foodir -- --all

Now I have the subdirectories still left in the central shared repository and I would like to remove them. As far as I understood from searching the web something like
git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename' HEAD
should be used to remove old Directories from the history.

While I believe this will work, I am now wondering if this is the best way to remove something from the history in the case where the repository is shared, as I understood that everyone with a local clone would basically have to re-clone the repository ?

So my ultimate question is, am I right with these assumptions or is there a way to remove Directories from multiple branches in the history without everyone having to clone the repository again?

UPDATE
So I ran some tests and an currently running with this command: git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch -- Dir1 DIR2' --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all which works but it also completely changes all SHA-1 keys of all commits, which is understandable but not desirable. And it would mean everybody has to re-clone the repository and all previous links via Gitweb are going to b broken.

Answer 1

You cannot silently alter commits if other people already have them. That's how Git works and it is a feature.