delete personal/private files from a repo that is publicly available and you have accidentally pushed files that shouldn’t be out there like SSH keys, passwords, configs etc. Do this using BFG Repo-Cleaner to alter the history of your Git repo
tl;dr
1git clone --mirror REPO_URL
2java -jar ~/Downloads/bfg-1.13.0.jar --delete-files FILE_NAME MY_REPO.git
3cd MY_REPO.git
4git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
5git push # this will force update all refs as well because you cloned with --mirror
1# see if java is installed
2echo $(/usr/libexec/java_home)
3
4# download and install Java
5# https://java.com/en/download/mac_download.jsp
6# jre-8u191-macosx-x64.dmg
7
8# to use Java runtime and command line tools you need to install Java Developer Kit
9# install JDK
10# https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
11# jdk-11.0.1_osx-x64_bin.dmg
12
13# download BFG Repo-Cleaner
14# https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/
15
16# check that BFG works
17java -jar ~/Downloads/bfg-1.13.0.jar
18
19# mirror the repo
20# clone a fresh copy of your repo, using the --mirror flag
21git clone --mirror git@bitbucket.org:aamnah/deleteme.git
22
23# use bfg
24java -jar ~/Downloads/bfg-1.13.0.jar --delete-files id_rsa deleteme.git
25
26# go to the repo, cleanup, and push changes
27cd deleteme.git
28git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive
29git push # this will force update all refs as well because you cloned with --mirror
So i pushed some files that were personal to a public Github repo. Nothing too damaging but still stuff i wouldn’t want to be included on a tech blog.
For the sake of this tutorial let’s just assume that i committed SSH keys, and NO you don’t want the public to have your keys..
1java -jar ~/Downloads/bfg-1.13.0.jar --delete-files id_rsa deleteme.git
Replace all passwords listed in a file (prefix lines ‘regex:’ or ‘glob:’ if required) with ***REMOVED*** wherever they occur in your repository :
1$ bfg --replace-text passwords.txt deleteme.git
1# java -jar ~/Downloads/bfg-1.13.0.jar
2bfg 1.13.0
3Usage: bfg [options] [<repo>]
4
5 -b, --strip-blobs-bigger-than <size>
6 strip blobs bigger than X (eg '128K', '1M', etc)
7 -B, --strip-biggest-blobs NUM
8 strip the top NUM biggest blobs
9 -bi, --strip-blobs-with-ids <blob-ids-file>
10 strip blobs with the specified Git object ids
11 -D, --delete-files <glob>
12 delete files with the specified names (eg '*.class', '*.{txt,log}' - matches on file name, not path within repo)
13 --delete-folders <glob> delete folders with the specified names (eg '.svn', '*-tmp' - matches on folder name, not path within repo)
14 --convert-to-git-lfs <value>
15 extract files with the specified names (eg '*.zip' or '*.mp4') into Git LFS
16 -rt, --replace-text <expressions-file>
17 filter content of files, replacing matched text. Match expressions should be listed in the file, one expression per line - by default, each expression is treated as a literal, but 'regex:' & 'glob:' prefixes are supported, with '==>' to specify a replacement string other than the default of '***REMOVED***'.
18 -fi, --filter-content-including <glob>
19 do file-content filtering on files that match the specified expression (eg '*.{txt,properties}')
20 -fe, --filter-content-excluding <glob>
21 don't do file-content filtering on files that match the specified expression (eg '*.{xml,pdf}')
22 -fs, --filter-content-size-threshold <size>
23 only do file-content filtering on files smaller than <size> (default is 1048576 bytes)
24 -p, --protect-blobs-from <refs>
25 protect blobs that appear in the most recent versions of the specified refs (default is 'HEAD')
26 --no-blob-protection allow the BFG to modify even your *latest* commit. Not recommended: you should have already ensured your latest commit is clean.
27 --private treat this repo-rewrite as removing private data (for example: omit old commit ids from commit messages)
28 --massive-non-file-objects-sized-up-to <size>
29 increase memory usage to handle over-size Commits, Tags, and Trees that are up to X in size (eg '10M')
30 <repo> file path for Git repository to clean