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filipechagas/git-filter-branch.md

Created August 26, 2020 18:32
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git-filter-branch.md

Git filter-branch

So today I noticed my git repository was taking too much disk space and discovered it was due to bundler caching gems. At first I thought I'd just remove vendor/cache directory it be done with it. But that's not how git works, is it?

That's how I came across git filter-branch.

The following command will remove the vendor/cache directory and all its references throughout your repository history.

git filter-branch --force --index-filter "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch -r vendor/cache"

Undoing it

And, should you realise you shouldn't have done that, git is also there for you. Whenever you use filter-branch, git creates a backup of the previous state for you at .git/refs/original/refs/heads/NAME_OF_YOUR_BRANCH. Meaning all you have to do is run:

git reset --hard refs/original/refs/heads/NAME_OF_YOUR_BRANCH

You're welcome ;)

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