How do I remove version tracking from a project cloned from git?

Asked 21/1, 2011 at 0:12 Answered 7/11, 2023 at 13:52

980

I want to remove all version tracking from a project's directory.

What is the correct method to do this?

Can I do a shell command such as:

rm -rf .git

from my projects directory or is there a way to do this as a Git command?

I used this project to learn Git and realize I made some mistakes early on in the project with moved, renamed and deleted files. I'd like to remove all Git tracking and start fresh with git init.

Knowall answered 21/1, 2011 at 0:12 Comment(3)

Consider git-archive. – Naturalistic 21/1, 2011 at 0:19

Depending on how bad the mistakes were, you might actually want to do an interactive rebase of the whole thing and just squash together a ton of commits early on, but save more recent good history. – Ability 21/1, 2011 at 0:21

for windows users: rd /s /q .git – Moreen 24/5, 2017 at 19:50

986

All the data Git uses for information is stored in .git/, so removing it should work just fine. Of course, make sure that your working copy is in the exact state that you want it, because everything else will be lost. .git folder is hidden so make sure you turn on the "Show hidden files, folders and disks" option.

From there, you can run git init to create a fresh repository.

Bubbler answered 21/1, 2011 at 0:15 Comment(4)

I am certain that my subfolders do not have their own hidden .git directory, but I still get the greyed out icon when pushing those folders to github... is there anything else I can try? – Downwards 11/5, 2016 at 11:10

There is also .gitconfig, so you should also remove it. – Cratch 26/4, 2019 at 16:43

consider 'code'git rm -r --cached your_folder/ my goal was to turn a tracked git folder into a child folder of another tracked git folder. The new parent wouldn't recognize the new child until I removed the cache of the child folder. – Preachment 30/9, 2019 at 3:29

I wish all other stuff could be as easily removed as deleting a single directory. Usually you end up with trash all over the place from the "deleted" part. – Tactful 18/2, 2022 at 19:45

587

rm -rf .git should suffice. That will blow away all Git-related information.

Toomer answered 21/1, 2011 at 0:15 Comment(9)

If you get some cannot unlink Permission denied in windows, you can kill explorer process in task manager, rerun the rm -rf .git and reopen explorer after that. it works for me! – Giffin 8/4, 2016 at 12:58

If you have Git Bash on windows, it will also work. – Tilney 24/6, 2016 at 6:34

what does -rf mean? – Nerine 8/2, 2017 at 22:26

-r means "recursive", so it will delete the entire contents of the folder instead of erroring out because the folder isn't empty, and -f makes it not ask if you're really sure about deleting stuff. – Toomer 10/2, 2017 at 0:4

You may have to restart Xcode to see the effect of this command in iOS. – Amphipod 21/11, 2018 at 9:43

@Lucky_girl It will remove all Git state from your checkout. No branches, no history, no remotes, nothing at all. All of that stuff is stored in the .git directory. Without it, you literally don't have a git repository anymore. – Toomer 6/5, 2020 at 21:35

@LilyBallard is there any possibility to restore git after that command? or there is no way to restore anything after that? – Arianism 7/5, 2020 at 13:21

@Arianism You can't restore anything from git after that. That's the whole point of this. The question was how to blow away all the git info to start fresh, and that's what this does. After deleting the .git dir you can rerun git init to start a fresh repo. – Toomer 8/5, 2020 at 18:9

i have tried but it gives me the error stated ...... Remove-Item : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'rf'. At line:1 char:4 + rm -rf .git + ~~~ + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Remove-Item], ParameterBindingException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NamedParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand – Roaring 30/3, 2021 at 19:25

167

In addition to the steps below, you may want to also remove the .gitignore file.

Consider removing the .gitignore file if you want to remove any trace of Git in your project.
** Consider leaving the .gitignore file if you would ever want reincorporate Git into the project.

Some frameworks may automatically produce the .gitignore file so you may want to leave it.

Linux, Mac, or Unix based operating systems

Open a terminal and navigate to the directory of your project, i.e. - cd path_to_your_project.

Run this command:
rm -rf .git*

This will remove the Git tracking and metadata from your project. If you want to keep the metadata (such as .gitignore and .gitkeep), you can delete only the tracking by running rm -rf .git.

Windows

Using the command prompt

The rmdir or rd command will not delete/remove any hidden files or folders within the directory you specify, so you should use the del command to be sure that all files are removed from the .git folder.

Open the command prompt
1. Either click Start then Run or hit the key and r at the same time.
2. Type cmd and hit enter
Navigate to the project directory, i.e. - cd path_to_your_project

Run these commands

del /F /S /Q /A .git

rmdir .git

The first command removes all files and folder within the .git folder. The second removes the .git folder itself.

No command prompt

Open the file explorer and navigate to your project
Show hidden files and folders - refer to this article for a visual guide
1. In the view menu on the toolbar, select Options
2. In the Advanced Settings section, find Hidden files and Folders under the Files and Folders list and select Show hidden files and folders
Close the options menu and you should see all hidden folders and files including the .git folder.

Delete the .git folder Delete the .gitignore file ** (see note at the top of this answer)

Percyperdido answered 29/4, 2016 at 18:36 Comment(4)

rmdir .git doesn't work because there are folders under it. – Connolly 8/4, 2019 at 21:44

Dale, check out the line under rmdir .git. It explains that the command above rmdir .git is used to remove all files and folders within the .git folder, before the rmdir command removes the folder itself. – Percyperdido 10/4, 2019 at 6:59

you might as well do rd /s /q .git, which will blow away the folder and everything in it – Jamesy 28/8, 2019 at 0:59

For windows, rmdir /S .git got the job done. Thanks for this. – Flavia 23/4, 2020 at 14:49

It's not a clever choice to move all .git* by hand, particularly when these .git files are hidden in sub-folders just like my condition: when I installed Skeleton Zend 2 by composer+git, there are quite a number of .git files created in folders and sub-folders.

I tried rm -rf .git on my GitHub shell, but the shell can not recognize the parameter -rf of Remove-Item.

www.montanaflynn.me introduces the following shell command to remove all .git files one time, recursively! It's really working!

find . | grep "\.git/" | xargs rm -rf

Deportee answered 25/11, 2013 at 23:52 Comment(5)

"I tried 'rm -rf .git' on my Github shell, but the shell can not recognize the parameter '-rf' of Remove-Item." - that's because rm is a PowerShell alias for remove-item. And -rf is *nix shell rm arguments. For PowerShell, use rm -recursive -force instead. – Manslayer 1/11, 2015 at 6:9

DANGEROUS! grep .git would match files like legit.gif or anithing with "git" in the middle of the filename! Please remove or edit the answer!!! – Orna 6/10, 2016 at 18:51

Update to match only on git dirs: find . | grep "\.git/" – Cenobite 5/1, 2017 at 17:4

Still not safe enough: this will catch files and directories that end with .git. It should be grep "^\.git/"; even better (and faster) would be to filter by name in find invocation: find . -name .git. – Blimp 9/12, 2017 at 4:39

Do execute following commands: find -name .git | xargs rm -rf and find -name .gitignore | xargs rm -rf. – Gregor 21/3, 2018 at 6:39

I am working with a Linux environment. I removed all Git files and folders in a recursive way:

rm -rf .git

rm -rf .gitkeep

Tonguetied answered 6/11, 2017 at 6:31 Comment(0)

The easiest way to solve this problem is to use a command line. Type this command

rm -R .git/

rm -rf .git/

Falcone answered 4/10, 2018 at 7:45 Comment(0)

In a Windows environment you can remove Git tracking from a project's directory by simply typing the below.

rd .git /S/Q

Roussillon answered 6/9, 2017 at 19:31 Comment(0)

MacOS: To remove version tracking, you need to remove Git directories. For that, open terminal and enter your project file. After that, you need to remove Git directories.

Example:

Shortly write in terminal (-r: recursive, -f: force, star is start with .git directories):

rm -rf .git*

Result is that Git directories and version tracking removed.

Limb answered 28/4, 2021 at 19:50 Comment(0)

From root folder run

find . | grep .git

Review the matches and confirm it only contains those files you want to delete and adjust to suit. Once satisfied, run

find . | grep .git | xargs rm -rf

User answered 17/7, 2019 at 9:38 Comment(0)

Windows Command Prompt (cmd) User: Use the below option If "rm -r" is NOT available.

You could delete '.git' recursively inside the source project folder using a single line command.

FOR /F "tokens=*" %G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S *.git*') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%G"

Belldas answered 29/1, 2018 at 16:4 Comment(0)

You can also remove all the git related stuff using one command. The .gitignore file will also be deleted with this one.

rm -rf .git*

Reposition answered 2/10, 2020 at 6:50 Comment(0)

Step 1 : Go where your root folder is.
Step 2 : Right click then click on open with Git Bash.
Step 3 : rm -fr .git enter this command. It will delete the .git folder from your project.
Step 4 : After this command successfully run. Enter git status and it will give you fatal error it means the git file is not exist now.

Cardoon answered 22/7, 2023 at 16:6 Comment(0)

If you are using MacOS and are nervous using 'rm -rf' to remove the .git directory, you can also do it from Finder.

Open Finder
Navigate to the folder contains the .git directory you want to remove
Press Command+Shift+. (period key) to show the hidden files in that folder
Move the .git folder to bin

You can check it has worked back on the terminal by using 'git status' to make sure Git no longer recognises it as a repository.

Sigfried answered 7/11, 2023 at 13:52 Comment(0)

-1

I tried everything for removing version tracking for windows in Powershell but nothing worked. However, when I tried this:

 rm -force .git*

It worked. Hope it helps you.

Dread answered 7/8, 2022 at 11:52 Comment(1)

This has already been mentioned in previous answers – Arguello 10/8, 2022 at 10:43

-1

I have found this super easy even for rails new projects so that I can have a new git history and branching as I want and customize.

rm -rf .git

Moralist answered 7/12, 2022 at 22:21 Comment(1)

This command has already been mentioned many times in the other answers. – Caterer 7/12, 2022 at 23:29

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