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index 7ffe03f4279a8ca8110806260f33a58f849351e4..237f85e7673e90b214550e051d92c4cb0865413a 100644 (file)
--index-filter <command>::
This is the filter for rewriting the index. It is similar to the
tree filter but does not check out the tree, which makes it much
- faster. For hairy cases, see linkgit:git-update-index[1].
+ faster. Frequently used with `git rm \--cached
+ \--ignore-unmatch ...`, see EXAMPLES below. For hairy
+ cases, see linkgit:git-update-index[1].
--parent-filter <command>::
This is the filter for rewriting the commit's parent list.
a simple `rm filename` will fail for that tree and commit.
Thus you may instead want to use `rm -f filename` as the script.
-A significantly faster version:
+Using `\--index-filter` with 'git-rm' yields a significantly faster
+version. Like with using `rm filename`, `git rm --cached filename`
+will fail if the file is absent from the tree of a commit. If you
+want to "completely forget" a file, it does not matter when it entered
+history, so we also add `\--ignore-unmatch`:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached filename' HEAD
+git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename' HEAD
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, you will get the rewritten history saved in HEAD.
-As with using `rm filename`, `git rm --cached filename` will fail
-if the file is absent from the tree of a commit. If it is not important
-whether the file is already absent from the tree, you can use
-`git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch filename` instead.
-
To rewrite the repository to look as if `foodir/` had been its project
root, and discard all other history: