git-rm - man pages section 1: User Commands

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git-rm (1)

Name

git-rm - Remove files from the working tree and from the index

Synopsis

git rm [-f | --force] [-n] [-r] [--cached] [--ignore-unmatch] [--quiet] [--] <file>...

Description

Git Manual GIT-RM(1)

NAME
git-rm - Remove files from the working tree and from the
index

SYNOPSIS
git rm [-f | --force] [-n] [-r] [--cached] [--ignore-unmatch] [--quiet] [--] <file>...

DESCRIPTION
Remove files from the index, or from the working tree and
the index. git rm will not remove a file from just your
working directory. (There is no option to remove a file only
from the working tree and yet keep it in the index; use
/bin/rm if you want to do that.) The files being removed
have to be identical to the tip of the branch, and no
updates to their contents can be staged in the index, though
that default behavior can be overridden with the -f option.
When --cached is given, the staged content has to match
either the tip of the branch or the file on disk, allowing
the file to be removed from just the index.

OPTIONS
<file>...
Files to remove. Fileglobs (e.g. *.c) can be given to
remove all matching files. If you want git to expand
file glob characters, you may need to shell-escape them.
A leading directory name (e.g. dir to remove dir/file1
and dir/file2) can be given to remove all files in the
directory, and recursively all sub-directories, but this
requires the -r option to be explicitly given.

-f, --force
Override the up-to-date check.

-n, --dry-run
Don't actually remove any file(s). Instead, just show if
they exist in the index and would otherwise be removed
by the command.

-r
Allow recursive removal when a leading directory name is
given.

--
This option can be used to separate command-line options
from the list of files, (useful when filenames might be
mistaken for command-line options).

--cached
Use this option to unstage and remove paths only from
the index. Working tree files, whether modified or not,
will be left alone.

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--ignore-unmatch
Exit with a zero status even if no files matched.

-q, --quiet

git rm normally outputs one line (in the form of an rm
command) for each file removed. This option suppresses
that output.

DISCUSSION
The <file> list given to the command can be exact pathnames,
file glob patterns, or leading directory names. The command
removes only the paths that are known to git. Giving the
name of a file that you have not told git about does not
remove that file.

File globbing matches across directory boundaries. Thus,
given two directories d and d2, there is a difference
between using git rm 'd*' and git rm 'd/*', as the former
will also remove all of directory d2.

REMOVING FILES THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM THE FILESYSTEM
There is no option for git rm to remove from the index only
the paths that have disappeared from the filesystem.
However, depending on the use case, there are several ways
that can be done.

Using "git commit -a"
If you intend that your next commit should record all
modifications of tracked files in the working tree and
record all removals of files that have been removed from the
working tree with rm (as opposed to git rm), use git commit
-a, as it will automatically notice and record all removals.
You can also have a similar effect without committing by
using git add -u.

Using "git add -A"
When accepting a new code drop for a vendor branch, you
probably want to record both the removal of paths and
additions of new paths as well as modifications of existing
paths.

Typically you would first remove all tracked files from the
working tree using this command:

git ls-files -z | xargs -0 rm -f

and then untar the new code in the working tree. Alternately
you could rsync the changes into the working tree.

After that, the easiest way to record all removals,

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additions, and modifications in the working tree is:

git add -A

See git-add(1).

Other ways
If all you really want to do is to remove from the index the
files that are no longer present in the working tree
(perhaps because your working tree is dirty so that you
cannot use git commit -a), use the following command:

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=D -z | xargs -0 git rm --cached

EXAMPLES
git rm Documentation/\*.txt
Removes all *.txt files from the index that are under
the Documentation directory and any of its
subdirectories.

Note that the asterisk * is quoted from the shell in
this example; this lets git, and not the shell, expand
the pathnames of files and subdirectories under the
Documentation/ directory.

git rm -f git-*.sh
Because this example lets the shell expand the asterisk
(i.e. you are listing the files explicitly), it does not
remove subdir/git-foo.sh.

ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

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NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://git-
core.googlecode.com/files/git-1.7.9.2.tar.gz

Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://git-scm.com/.

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