Git remove files from repository, Github and commiters

Question

Somebody accidentally checked in 80 megs worth of JPG's into our git repository and pushed it to github central repository.

A few people since pulled these changes.

Apart from shooting the committer, what can I do to remove these images completely from the repository's history and github? And then inflict all changes on other committers.

Answer 1

You need to fix the changes with git reset sha_of_last_good_commit than push those backup up with git push -f. You will than need to tell everyone to pull the new changes back down.

• If there are changes that you want to keep intermingled with the bad commits, you will need to git rebase -i to pluck out the ones you don't want before you push your fixed repo back up to github.

• Garbage collection will eventually remove the dangling objects, or you can force it with git gc --aggressive

Answer 2

A more radical approach is using filter-branch.

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -f *.jpg' HEAD

However you should be VERY careful when using this, as you can really mess up your repo. You should check the docs before doing anything.