git: forever remove files or folders from history

I recently had a need to rewrite a git repository’s history. This isn’t generally a very good idea, though it is useful if your repository contains files it should not (such as unneeded large binary files, username/password or copyrighted material).


# make sure we're at the root of git repo
if [ ! -d .git ]; then
echo "Error: must run this script from the root of a git repository"
exit 1
fi

# remove all paths passed as arguments from the history of the repo
[email protected]
git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch $files" HEAD

# remove the temporary history git-filter-branch otherwise leaves behind for a long time
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ && git reflog expire --all && git gc --aggressive --prune