Git Rm

In Git, rm stands for remove, enabling the deletion of tracked files from both the working directory and staging index. Its primary function is to eliminate specific files from the Git index. However, for successful removal, files must align with the branch's ideal state; otherwise, complexities arise. To forcefully remove files, the -f option is available. Essentially, git rm serves as the counterpart to git add, facilitating the untracking of files within a Git repository.

Pre-requisites

The prerequisites for learning about Git branching strategy can be a basic understanding of Version Control Systems, Branching, and Git. Before learning about the git bisect command, let us discuss them briefly.

A version control system is a tool in software development that tracks the changes in the code, documents, and other important information regarding a certain code base (or project), etc. Git is a version control system that tracks the changes in the code, documents, and other important information regarding a certain code base (or project), etc. Git is free and one of the most widely used version control systems. Apart from that, we must know the concepts of the git log command and the git status command as both of these commands will help us to know the exact scenario of the Git repository.

Usage

Let us now learn about the various uses of the git rm command.

As we have already discussed that this command is used to remove the file(s) from the staging area as well as from the working directory.

Suppose that we are working on a project and we have made a few modifications in our current branch. Now, we want to remove a file named test.txt from the current working directory. The overall command to remove the test.txt file can be:

If we issue the above command, then the specified file(s) will be removed from the staging area as well as from the working directory. If we issue the git status command following the git rm command then Git will show us that the file is deleted in the green color.

We can also use the rm command (not the git rm command) to delete the file(s) from the working directory. There is a major difference between the git rm command and the rm command. The git rm command permanently removes the file(s) from Git but the rm command does not permanently remove the file(s). The files can still be tracked from the staging area.

So, if we issue the rm test.txt file command then the file does not permanently delete files. Git will show us that the file is deleted in the red color. So, when we issue the git status command following the rm test.txt command, then we can track the deleted file in the staging area. If we want to get back the deleted file, we can do so using the git commit command.

Now, suppose we have deleted the test.txt file using the rm command. If we want to get back the deleted file, we can follow the following steps:

1. Add the deleted file to the index.

2. Commit the file with some commit message.

So, if we follow the above steps, the deleted file(s) will be retrieved from the staging area to our working directory.

Important Options

Let us now look at the various options associated with this command.

• <pathspec>: This command helps us to remove the specified files that are known to Git.
• -f or --force: This option is helpful if we want to override the checking of updation also known as an up-to-date check.
• -n or --dry-run: This option can be used to see if there exists any such file in the index. So, this option does not remove the files, it can be used to see the file's presence in the index.
• -r: This option helps us to achieve recursive removal of the files when we have specified a lot of leading directory names.
• --: If we want to add some command line and we do not want to mix the command line command along with the name of the to-be-deleted file, we can use -- as a separator to separate the file names and command line commands.
• --cached: The --cached command is used to remove and un-stage the specified path from the index only. Whether the working files are modified or not but they will be left alone.
• --ignore-unmatch: As the name suggests, if the name of the specified file does not match then this command will help in a zero status exit.
• -q or --quiet: This option helps us to hide the output of the git rm command and now the command will only provide a one-liner output of the removed files.

To learn more about these commands and more, please refer to the official documentation here.

git rm Cached

There may be situations in which we do not want to track some files or in simpler terms, we want to remove some files from Git but also want the files to be present in our local repository then we can use the --cached flag along with the rm command.

The --cached flag is used along with the rm command to remove the specified file from the staging area. It will not remove the file from the working directory. We can say that this flag helps the rm command to work as the rm command (that we have discussed in the above section).

The overall command for the same is:

So, when we issue the git status command following the rm test.txt command, then we can track the deleted file in the staging area. If we want to get back the deleted file, we can do so using the git commit command.

Why Use git rm Instead of rm?

In many situations, we do not want to track certain files currently but we may need to refer to those files in the future for reference then we need to use the rm command instead of the git rm command.

As we know that the rm command deletes or removes the files from the staging area as well as from the working directory. So, we use the rm command as this command only removes the files from the staging and not from the working directory.

Example

For example, if we want to remove a file named test.txt from the current working directory. The overall command to remove the test.txt file can be:

The rm command cannot be used to remove the remove files of the other branches. If we use the above command, the deletion process is only operated on the staging area trees and the working directory of the current branch.

How to Remove Files No Longer in the Filesystem?

If we want to remove the files that are no longer present in the file system, then we can issue the rm shell command. The overall command for the same is:

If we issue the above command, a list of all the removed files from the current working directory is generated and the list of those files will be appended (using the pipe symbol |) with the git rm --cached command. Since the list is appended to the git rm --cached command, all the listed files will be deleted.

This is what we call the conjunction of several commands and flags and these features make Git a very useful version control system.

Undo the git rm Command

If we want to undo the deletion of the file or get back the deleted file, we need to use the Git reset feature. We can use the git reset command to reset the HEAD pointer and get back our deleted file.

But how Git can retrieve our file if we have already removed it? Well, the file does not get permanently deleted (that is the beauty of the Git versioning system). Git understands that we may need to get back the deleted file if we have accidentally issued the command. So, the removal changes are stored in the history until a new Git commit is made. So, we can get back the file if we have not issued a new Git commit.

The git reset command as the name suggests helps us to reset the changes made to the working tree of our repository. The git reset command changes the indexing as well as the working tree. The git reset command not only deals with the index and working tree but also resets the HEAD pointer to the previously made commit. There are three forms of the git reset command and depending on the type of the command the resetting is made.

We have three forms of the git reset command.

• The first form of the git reset command is a soft reset. Only the reference pointer is reset when we pass the -soft flag with the git reset command.
• The second form of the git reset command is a hard reset. Unlike the soft reset, the hard reset resets almost everything like resetting the staging index and resetting to the specified commit. We generally use the hard reset command at the time of merge conflict. We use the -hard to mention the hard reset.
• The third and the last form of the reset command is mixed reset. We can achieve the mixed reset using the -mixed flag. In mixed reset, only the pointers are updated and the staging index is reset to a specified commit.

We can use the third form i.e. --hard reset option to reset the HEAD pointer's position to the previous change.

Limits of git rm Command

Some restrictions are associated with the rm command. This command only works or operated on the currently active branch so we cannot remove files of the other branches. Hence, the deletion process is only operated on the staging area trees and the working directory of the current branch.