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. When sparse-checkouts are in use (see
       git-sparse-checkout(1)), git rm will only remove paths within the
       sparse-checkout patterns.

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.

       --sparse
           Allow updating index entries outside of the sparse-checkout
           cone. Normally, git rm refuses to update index entries whose
           paths do not fit within the sparse-checkout cone. See
           git-sparse-checkout(1) for more.

       -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
       submodule’s 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 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  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 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                      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)