Protecting sensitive information in Git

Question

Assume I have a project I'm working on that is a blog. In this blog I have a config file with sensitive information in it. When I decide to push this project to Github, I want the config file filled with example data instead of my sensitive data. What is the best, and most widely used, method of achieving this?

Answer 1

Don't put it there in the first place. Check in an example config file with a different name, add the real config file's name to .gitignore, and never check it in.

If you've already done commits with your config file in place, use git filter-branch to make it go away before you push anywhere public.

Answer 2

One possible approach is:

1. fill the config file with dummy data, commit changes and push to GitHub

2. configure git to ignore changes in tracked file:

   git update-index --assume-unchanged config-file

3. fill the config file with sensitive information