Git stops tracking a file
In this article, we will learn how to stop tracking files and folders in a repository in Git.
In development repositories, we often run into situations where we no longer want changes to certain files to be tracked in Git.
Suppose we have a file that we now feel is redundant and no longer relevant to the project. In this case, we want to remove the file from tracking in the Git repository.
We will now illustrate this with an example.
git rmStop tracking a file in Git
using
Suppose we have a file called in a Git repository that file1we no longer wish to track.
We can remove the file from tracking in Git using the command --cachedwith the -remove option .git rm
$ git rm --cached file1
rm 'file1'
We can also remove a folder from tracking in Git repository using the following command.
$ git rm -r --cached <folder-name>
This will remove the specified file or folder from tracking (i.e.) remove it from the index; it will not delete the file from the file system.
Also note that we need to commit the file deletion to update this change in the remote repo.
$ git commit -m "Removed file1"
$ git push
git update-indexTo stop tracking a file
in Git, use
Sometimes, we may want to keep a file in the repository but no longer want to track its changes. We can achieve this using the command with the -r --skip-worktreeoption .git update-index
$ git update-index --skip-worktree file1
git update-indexThe -p option of
the command --skip-worktreecauses Git to pretend that the version of the file is up to date, and instead read from the index version. This is particularly useful for configuration files.
We may have some configuration files in our repository with default or production values and we may make some changes to them as required but don't want to commit those changes. The -p option for the command git update-indexcomes --skip-worktreevery handy for such purposes.
Therefore, we detail how to stop tracking files and folders in a Git repository.
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