Archived copy of David Underhill's helper script to remove & purge files from git repos. Original info: http://dound.com/2009/04/git-forever-remove-files-or-folders-from-history/ pulled from http://web.archive.org/web/20090630033829/http://dound.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/git-remove-history

git-remove-history

#!/bin/bash
set -o errexit

# Author: David Underhill
# Version: 1.0 (01-Apr-2009)
# Script to permanently delete files/folders from your git repository.  To use 
# it, cd to your repository's root and then run the script with a list of paths
# you want to delete, e.g., git-delete-history path1 path2

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    exit 0
fi

if [ ! -d .git ]; then
    echo "Error: must run this script from the root of a git repository"
    exit 1
fi

# remove all paths passed as arguments from the history of the repo
files=$@
git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch $files" HEAD

# remove the temporary history git-filter-branch otherwise leaves behind for a long time
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ && git reflog expire --all &&  git gc --aggressive --prune