How do I make Git forget about a file that was tracked, but is now in .gitignore?

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If you want Git to forget about a file that was previously tracked but is now in .gitignore, you'll need to perform two steps:

  1. Remove the file from Git's tracking: You can use the git rm --cached command to remove the file from Git's tracking while keeping it in your working directory. This tells Git to stop tracking changes to the file. You'll also need to commit this change.

  2. Update the .gitignore file: Ensure that the file you want to ignore is listed in the .gitignore file to prevent it from being tracked in the future.

Here's an example:

Suppose you have a file named config.ini that you want to stop tracking but keep in your working directory and ignore in the future.

Step 1: Remove the file from tracking but keep it in your working directory and commit the change.

bash
git rm --cached config.ini
git commit -m "Stop tracking config.ini"

The git rm --cached command removes the file from Git's tracking, and git commit commits this change.

Step 2: Update the .gitignore file to ignore the file in the future.

Open your .gitignore file in a text editor and add the filename config.ini to it if it's not already there.

plaintext
# .gitignore
config.ini

Now, config.ini is both removed from tracking and ignored by Git. Future changes to this file will not be tracked by Git unless you explicitly add it back.

Remember to commit the changes made to the .gitignore file as well:

bash
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Update .gitignore to ignore config.ini"

Now, Git will forget about the config.ini file and stop tracking it, and it won't appear in your future commits unless you intentionally add it back using git add.

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