git-rm(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | REMOVING FILES THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM THE FILESYSTEM | SUBMODULES | EXAMPLES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-RM(1)                        Git Manual                        GIT-RM(1)

NAME top

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

SYNOPSIS top

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

DESCRIPTION top

       Remove files matching pathspec 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 top

       <pathspec>...
           Files to remove. 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.

           The command removes only the paths that are known to Git.

           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.

           For more details, see the pathspec entry in gitglossary(7).

       -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.

       --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.

       --pathspec-from-file=<file>
           Pathspec is passed in <file> instead of commandline args. If
           <file> is exactly - then standard input is used. Pathspec
           elements are separated by LF or CR/LF. Pathspec elements can be
           quoted as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath
           (see git-config(1)). See also --pathspec-file-nul and global
           --literal-pathspecs.

       --pathspec-file-nul
           Only meaningful with --pathspec-from-file. Pathspec elements are
           separated with NUL character and all other characters are taken
           literally (including newlines and quotes).

REMOVING FILES THAT HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM THE FILESYSTEM top

       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, 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

SUBMODULES top

       Only submodules using a gitfile (which means they were cloned with a
       Git version 1.7.8 or newer) will be removed from the work tree, as
       their repository lives inside the .git directory of the superproject.
       If a submodule (or one of those nested inside it) still uses a .git
       directory, git rm will move the submodules git directory into the
       superprojects git directory to protect the submodule’s history. If it
       exists the submodule.<name> section in the gitmodules(5) file will
       also be removed and that file will be staged (unless --cached or -n
       are used).

       A submodule is considered up to date when the HEAD is the same as
       recorded in the index, no tracked files are modified and no untracked
       files that aren’t ignored are present in the submodules work tree.
       Ignored files are deemed expendable and won’t stop a submodule’s work
       tree from being removed.

       If you only want to remove the local checkout of a submodule from
       your work tree without committing the removal, use git-submodule(1)
       deinit instead. Also see gitsubmodules(7) for details on submodule
       removal.

EXAMPLES top

       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.

BUGS top

       Each time a superproject update removes a populated submodule (e.g.
       when switching between commits before and after the removal) a stale
       submodule checkout will remain in the old location. Removing the old
       directory is only safe when it uses a gitfile, as otherwise the
       history of the submodule will be deleted too. This step will be
       obsolete when recursive submodule update has been implemented.

SEE ALSO top

       git-add(1)

GIT top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control system)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on
       2020-08-13.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2020-08-11.)  If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
       there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.28.0.202.g7814e8           08/12/2020                        GIT-RM(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1) , git-add(1) , git-commit(1) , git-config(1) , git-merge(1) , git-submodule(1) , gitignore(5)