If you accidentally push a .env
file to a remote repository, you should immediately take steps to remove it and add it to .gitignore
to prevent it from being tracked in the future. Here are the detailed steps:
Use the git filter-branch
command to rewrite the history of your repository and remove the file. Replace PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE
with the actual path to the .env
file in your repository.
git filter-branch --force --index-filter\
"git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE"\
--prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all
This command rewrites the entire history of the repository to remove references to the specified file. It tells git rm
to untrack the file but also keep it in your working directory. The --ignore-unmatch
option ensures that the command doesn't fail if the file is absent in some commits. The --prune-empty
option removes commits that become empty as a result, i.e., commits that only included changes related to the removed file. Finally, the --all
option applies the filter to all refs in the repository, including branches and tags.
After the above step, the commits with the sensitive files are disassociated but still present. To remove these old commits, run:
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ | xargs -I {} git update-ref -d {}
Then, run the garbage collection commands:
git gc --prune=now
git gc --aggressive --prune=now
These commands prune the non-referenced objects and optimize the repository.
Since you've rewritten the history of your repository, you need to force push the changes to the remote repository. This will overwrite the history of the remote repository with your local one.
git push origin --force --all
git push origin --force --tags
The first command forcefully pushes all branches to the remote repository, and the second command forcefully pushes all tags to the remote repository.
If others have cloned or fetched from the repository, inform them about the changes. They will need to re-clone the repository or try to rebase their local changes atop the modified history.
Finally, add the .env
file to your .gitignore
file to prevent it from being tracked in the future. Simply open your .gitignore
file and add a new line with the relative path to your .env
file:
.env
Then, commit and push the updated .gitignore
file to the repository.
Remember, rewriting the history of a repository is a serious action. Make sure you understand the implications and have taken necessary measures to avoid losing any important changes.