Git: Delete a specific file using bfg (beg-repo-cleaner)

Question

I am trying to delete a file permanently from the Git history, because it contains sensitive data.

The file is called app/config.json.

However there are other files called config.json in other folders that I don't want deleted.

I tried the following:

git clone --mirror git://example.com/some-repo.git
bfg --delete-files app/config.json my-repo.git

but I get the error message:

Error: *** Can only match on filename, NOT path *** - remove '/' path segments

How do I delete just this specific file?

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 20 '17 at 15:41

3

"Warning: Once you have pushed a commit to GitHub, you should consider any data it contains to be compromised. If you committed a password, change it! If you committed a key, generate a new one." https://help.github.com/articles/removing-sensitive-data-from-a-repository/

cd my-repo/app
bfg --delete-files config.json

You could also try:

bfg --replace-text config.json

answered Jul 20 '17 at 15:41

madnight

2

I did a git mirror as suggested by the docs on the bfg website. For this do I need to do a normal clone – Yahya Uddin Jul 20 '17 at 15:42
2

When I run your command on the repo it says: `C:\path\to\some-repo\app is not a valid Git repository.` – Yahya Uddin Jul 20 '17 at 16:22
@YahyaUddin you should run the command from repo's root. In your example: C:\path\to\some-repo – Roman Orac Feb 14 '19 at 11:11

1 Answers1