git rm – fatal: pathspec did not match any files

by

In your case, use git filter-branch instead of git rm.

git rm will delete the files in the sense that they will not be tracked by git anymore, but that does not remove the old commit objects corresponding to those images, and so you will still be stuck with pushing the earlier commits which correspond to 12GB of images.

The git filter-branch, on the other hand, can remove those files from all the previous commits as well, thus doing away with the need to push any of them.

  1. Use the command

    git filter-branch --force --index-filter \
  'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch public/photos' \
  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

  2. After the filter branch is complete, verify that no unintended file was lost.

  3. Now add a .gitignore rule 

    echo public/photos >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore && git commit -m "ignore rule for photos"

  4. Now do a push

    git push -f origin branch

Check this, this and this for further help. Just to be on the safer side, I would suggest you create a backup copy of the repo on your system before going ahead with these instructions.

As for your orignial error message, it is happening because you already untracked them using git rm, and hence git is complaining because it can’t remove a file it isn’t tracking. Read more about this here.

More Related Contents:

  1. How to change the author and committer name and e-mail of multiple commits in Git?
  2. Detach (move) subdirectory into separate Git repository
  3. Remove sensitive files and their commits from Git history
  4. How do you fix a bad merge, and replay your good commits onto a fixed merge?
  5. Change first commit of project with Git? [duplicate]
  6. How do I remove the old history from a git repository?
  7. How to substitute text from files in git history?
  8. Completely remove files from Git repo and remote on GitHub
  9. How do I change the author and committer name/email for multiple commits?
  10. Detach many subdirectories into a new, separate Git repository
  11. How can I move a directory in a Git repo for all commits?
  12. Splitting a set of files within a git repo into their own repository, preserving relevant history [duplicate]
  13. Split large Git repository into many smaller ones
  14. How to split a git repository while preserving subdirectories?
  15. How do I run a code formatter over my source without modifying git history?
  16. Could I change my name and surname in all previous commits?
  17. How can I rewrite history so that all files, except the ones I already moved, are in a subdirectory?
  18. How to extract one file with commit history from a Git repo with index-filter & co?
  19. Update a development team with rewritten Git repo history, removing big files
  20. Running filter-branch over a range of commits
  21. Why has git-filter-branch not rewritten tags?
  22. Rewrite history git filter-branch create / split into submodules / subprojects
  23. Can tags be automatically moved after a git filter-branch and rebase?
  24. Git – remove commits with empty changeset using filter-branch
  25. How can I selectively merge or pick changes from another branch in Git?
  26. Git: How to solve Permission denied (publickey) error when using Git?
  27. How to convert a Git shallow clone to a full clone?
  28. git pull while not in a git directory
  29. git log output encoding issues on Windows 10 CLI terminal
  30. GitHub changes repository to the wrong language

Leave a Comment