cleaning sensitive data from a repo

bfg

- Start somewhere with Java runtime and a Git command line. Git should be configured with a valid SSH key for the repo. 
- Create and push a new commit reverting any changes you want to wipe. This is done to ensure the commit is not 'protected'. 

- Create & cd into temporary dir if you want. 
- Download .jar file from here - search for 'downloadable jar'.
	https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

- Clone repo (with github, use ssh URL, not https) with --mirror:
	git clone --mirror [repo location]

- If you want, run bfg without any inputs to see a list of options.
  java -jar bfg*jar

- If you are cleaning passwords, put the passwords in plain text, one per line, in passwords.txt, then do:

java -jar bfg*jar --replace-text paswords.txt [repo dir]

- Make sure this doesn't warn you about commits not being changed because they're protected.

Finally:
cd [repo dir]
git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
git push

Once the push succeeds, you can remove the repo dir and passwords.txt file. 

Note: github desktop on Windows seemed to have problems pulling the changes after cleaning. You may need to delete and re-clone the repo. 

And of course, other copies ofthe repo should be re-pulled from origin. 


More detail here:
https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/