After checking out a branch in a repository git always prints a list of roughly 25 files that were deleted long ago. I always just ignored that output but recently I had to do a hard reset, which I assumed would just go back to the last commit, which it did but it also restored those 25 files. Is there some way of removing those files from git? I tried git rm but since they were long deleted that didn't work!
+1
A:
If they were deleted Git wouldn’t restore them upon a git reset --hard so git rm should indeed be the correct way to get rid of them. (Don’t forget to commit afterwards!)
You might want to take a look at what Git thinks has happened with these files. git log path/to/file might help you there.
Other things to check are:
- are you on the correct branch?
gitk --allwill give you a nice overview of all your branches, including the ability to search for changes to a specific file only. - are you on the correct repository? If you have multiple checkouts of your repository all over your harddriver you might simply be looking at an old one.
- maybe someone has added these files again? Again, check the commit logs using
git log.
Bombe
2009-08-26 14:14:24
When I type git log:master $ git log app/views/participants/index.html.erbfatal: ambiguous argument 'app/views/participants/index.html.erb': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.Yet that is one of the files that keeps on appearing with a 'D' next to it when I checkout. I believe that those files were deleted normally, without the help of git, could that be the problem?
LDK
2009-08-26 14:33:24
+1
A:
It sounds like you deleted the files from your directory, but never committed the deletions (like Bombe said, with git rm). That's why they came back after the git reset.
Deleting a file is just like any other change, it has to be recorded in the repository (which is what git rm [file] will do).
Mike Tierney
2009-08-26 14:38:48
Just to be clear. After I've made some changes I usually do the following: "git add .", then "git commit -m "change made"". If I deleted a file should I then type: "git rm .", then "git commit -m "removed file"". Or will "git rm ." just remove everything (even files that were not deleted?).
LDK
2009-08-26 14:44:46
Yeah, I made that mistake - "git rm ." will removing everything. My current workflow is to use `git commit -a -m 'Commit message'`, which will stage *all* of the changes you've made, with the exception of untracked files (which you'll still need to do `git add <path>` on).
Mike Tierney
2009-08-26 14:56:18
Correct, but only with regard to tracked files. From the Manual (Git-Commit):"OPTIONS: -a, -all: Tell the command to automatically stage files that have been modified and deleted, but new files you have not told git about are not affected."
Mike Tierney
2009-08-26 15:58:10