Removing ignored files from git
If you ever were in the situation that already checked-in files or directories in git should be removed, there’s a single command that does exactly this. This command avoids deleting the data, commits the deletion and adds the same data afterwards again.
# In this example, the 'bin'-directory
# gets removed from git. Note that this
# operation doesn't remove the file
# itself, only its reference in git.
git rm -r --cached bin
# Same command, for the file 'log.ts'.
git rm -r --cached log.ts
Works also for already checked-in data
This command also removes the specific file or directory from the git-tree if the data has been added before it was defined in the gitignore-file. Of course, the real file or directory won't get deleted, only its reference in git.
