WARNING: git filter-branch is no longer officially recommended
If you are here to copy-paste code:
This is an example which removes node_modules
from history
git filter-branch --tree-filter "rm -rf node_modules" --prune-empty HEAD
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -n 1 git update-ref -d
echo node_modules/ >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m 'Removing node_modules from git history'
git gc
git push origin master --force
What git actually does:
The first line iterates through all references on the same tree (--tree-filter
) as HEAD (your current branch), running the command rm -rf node_modules
. This command deletes the node_modules folder (-r
, without -r
, rm
won’t delete folders), with no prompt given to the user (-f
). The added --prune-empty
deletes useless (not changing anything) commits recursively.
The second line deletes the reference to that old branch.
The rest of the commands are relatively straightforward.