A little help needed with Git!

Help
1

Using Obsidian Git, I inadvertently tried to push a > 600mb attachment folder (along with usual changes of some “.md” files that needed to be backed-up). It would have taken forever so I just killed the process while Obsidian Git was pushing (probably worst idea ever).

Then, on Github, I added a .gitignore file with the path of attachment folder to be excluded and pulled the changes to my local repo using command line.

Now, how can I properly exclude this “attachment” folder since it was already committed to my local repo ?

I was thinking of something like git rm ATTACHMENT_PATH, but wouldn’t Obsidian Git try to add back this folder each times it tries to push ? Will the .gitignore file prevent this after the git rm ?

I hope this is not too confuse, I’m new to git.

Any help is welcome !

2

  • How to ignore previously tracked files.

  • Before doing this process, be sure to commit all changes, including the new .gitignore.

  • To clear the repository use the following command:

    • git rm -r --cached .
      • rm is the remove command
      • -r allows for recursive removal
      • --cached removes files from the index only. Local files are untouched.
      • . indicates that all files will be made untracked. A specific file name can be given to untrack that file only.

  • Add everything back to the repository:

    • git add .

  • Commit:

    • git commit

  • After this process, Git should start to ignore files listed in the .gitignore. It will not remove the files from the directory, just the Git index.

3

Thank you. Well, after doing this procedure and trying to push, even if a diff does not show the files of the attachment folder, for an unknown reason it still tries to push them…

I think it’s due to the fact that attachment folder was not added in the latest commit but in earlier commit, thus those need to be cleaned too ? Not sure yet how to proceed.

Or maybe aborting the push was not a good idea ?

4

Make sure your .gitignore is correct for ignoring a directory.

5

Have you had any luck with this?

6

Hello @jwl,

I think my problem had to do with cleaning that big folder from my history of commit (see Removing sensitive data from a repository - GitHub Docs).

Unfortunately, I typed too many Github command that I don’t master enough, and at some points it became a mess so that it was much easier to start repo from scratch.

7

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.