git - remove file from the repository

Question

Hi,

I know there's a million similar questions already, but I'm not sure they apply. I am new to git, and have a project hosted on github. I accidentally added some big log files to the repository. When I noticed it, I git rm-ed them and then commit-ted the changes. That seems to have done the job, in that when I clone the repository, I get only the files I wanted (source code). However, the cloning now takes forever, because, I assume, git is still downloading those log files for some reason (the .git repository is now huge, although the main project files weigh a meg or so). How can I get rid of that bloat now?

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

You could try and follow the GitHub guide "remove sensitive data"

From time to time users accidentally commit data like passwords or keys into a git repo. While you can use git rm to remove the file, it will still be in the repo’s history. Fortunately, git makes it fairly simple to remove the file from the entire repo history.