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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.

Braiam
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daustin777
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    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. – Cascabel Jan 21 '11 at 00:21
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    for windows users: `rd /s /q .git` – Soorena May 24 '17 at 19:50
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    Consider [git-archive](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/160608/how-to-do-a-git-export-like-svn-export/163769#163769). – Martin v. Löwis Jan 21 '11 at 00:19

14 Answers14

973

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.

Braiam
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bobDevil
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    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? – Kokodoko May 11 '16 at 11:10
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    There is also .gitconfig, so you should also remove it. – Maximilian Mordig Apr 26 '19 at 16:43
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    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. – Ryan Huebert Sep 30 '19 at 03:29
  • 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. – Chapz Feb 18 '22 at 19:45
582

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

Peter Mortensen
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Lily Ballard
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    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! – Michael Apr 08 '16 at 12:58
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    If you have `Git Bash` on windows, it will also work. – viral Jun 24 '16 at 06:34
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    what does `-rf` mean? – nilon Feb 08 '17 at 22:26
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    `-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. – Lily Ballard Feb 10 '17 at 00:04
  • You may have to restart Xcode to see the effect of this command in iOS. – iHarshil Nov 21 '18 at 09:43
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    @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. – Lily Ballard May 06 '20 at 21:35
  • @LilyBallard is there any possibility to restore git after that command? or there is no way to restore anything after that? – Lucky_girl May 07 '20 at 13:21
  • @Lucky_girl 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. – Lily Ballard May 08 '20 at 18:09
  • 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 – Abd ur Rehman Mar 30 '21 at 19:25
166

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.

  1. Open the command prompt

    1. Either click Start then Run or hit the Windows key key and r at the same time.

    2. Type cmd and hit enter

  2. Navigate to the project directory, i.e. - cd path_to_your_project

  1. Run these commands

    1. del /F /S /Q /A .git

    2. rmdir .git

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

No command prompt

  1. Open the file explorer and navigate to your project

  2. 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

  3. 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)

Peter Mortensen
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Matt C
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    `rmdir .git` doesn't work because there are folders under it. – Dale Apr 08 '19 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. – Matt C Apr 10 '19 at 06:59
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    you might as well do `rd /s /q .git`, which will blow away the folder and everything in it – Greg Aug 28 '19 at 00:59
  • For windows, `rmdir /S .git` got the job done. Thanks for this. – Eder Luis Jorge Apr 23 '20 at 14:49
77

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
Peter Mortensen
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John Yin
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    _"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. – KFL Nov 01 '15 at 06:09
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    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!!! – pamatt Oct 06 '16 at 18:51
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    Update to match only on git dirs: find . | grep "\.git/" – Andrew Jan 05 '17 at 17:04
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    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`. – pvgoran Dec 09 '17 at 04:39
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    Do execute following commands: `find -name .git | xargs rm -rf` and `find -name .gitignore | xargs rm -rf`. – Developer Marius Žilėnas Mar 21 '18 at 06:39
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I am working with a Linux environment. I removed all Git files and folders in a recursive way:

rm -rf .git

rm -rf .gitkeep
Peter Mortensen
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Nitya Kumar
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The easiest way to solve this problem is to use a command line. Type this command

rm -R .git/

OR

rm -rf .git/
Emeka Augustine
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14

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

rd .git /S/Q
Peter Mortensen
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Rukshan Dangalla
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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:

enter image description here

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.

enter image description here

canerkaseler
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9

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

Bradley Sawler
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Kamesh Jungi
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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"
SridharKritha
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1

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*
Rahul Kodumuru
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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.

Abhay KanWasi
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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.

Prakash Niroula
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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
brytebee
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