Solution 1

.gitignore will prevent untracked files from being added (without an add -f) to the set of files tracked by Git. However, Git will continue to track any files that are already being tracked.

To stop tracking a file, we must remove it from the index:

git rm --cached <file>

To remove a folder and all files in the folder recursively:

git rm -r --cached <folder>

The removal of the file from the head revision will happen on the next commit.

WARNING: While this will not remove the physical file from your local machine, it will remove the files from other developers' machines on their next git pull.

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Solution 2

The series of commands below will remove all of the items from the Git index (not from the working directory or local repository), and then will update the Git index, while respecting Git ignores. PS. Index = Cache

First:

git rm -r --cached .
git add .

Then:

git commit -am "Remove ignored files"

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Or as a one-liner:

git rm -r --cached . && git add . && git commit -am "Remove ignored files"

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Solution 3

git update-index does the job for me:

git update-index --assume-unchanged <file>

Note: This solution is actually independent of .gitignore as gitignore is only for untracked files.

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Update, a better option

Since this answer was posted, a new option has been created and that should be preferred. You should use --skip-worktree which is for modified tracked files that the user don't want to commit anymore and keep --assume-unchanged for performance to prevent git to check status of big tracked files. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/13631525/717372 for more details...

git update-index --skip-worktree <file>

To cancel

git update-index --no-skip-worktree <file>

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Solution 4

git ls-files -c --ignored --exclude-standard -z | xargs -0 git rm --cached
git commit -am "Remove ignored files"

This takes the list of the ignored files, removes them from the index, and commits the changes.

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Solution 5

The copy/paste (one-liner) answer is:

git rm --cached -r .; git add .; git status; git commit -m "Ignore unwanted files"

This command will NOT change the content of the .gitignore file. It will ignore the files already committed to a Git repository, but now we have added them to .gitignore.

The command git status; is to review the changes and could be dropped.

Ultimately, it will immediately commit the changes with the message "Ignore unwanted files".

If you don't want to commit the changes, drop the last part of the command (git commit -m "Ignore unwanted files")

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