How to remove files that are in .gitignore but still in the git repository

Removing those pesky files that I forgot to remove from the repository but are already in GitHub.

Will Kim • January 27, 2021 •

Code 💻

There are numerous times where we either forgot to remove some unnecessary files but are commited and pushed to master branch in GitHub. In these situation, the following code which I found in StackOverflow helped removing the files from the master branch:

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i --exclude-from=.gitignore`

If you are on windows, you can try:

git ls-files -i -z --exclude-from=.gitignore | xargs -0 git rm --cached

One thing I think is important is to update the .gitignore file before running the code in order to properly work.

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