BFG Repo-Cleaner specialises in removing unwanted material from the history of a Git repository. Common reasons to use it include oversized committed files, accidentally committed passwords and confidential data that should never have entered a shared project.
The program is oriented towards bulk cleanup rather than arbitrary transformations of every historical commit. Because modifying history changes commit identifiers, collaborators still need to coordinate the replacement of any shared history after cleaning.
Deleting a secret from the latest working tree does not erase copies stored in earlier Git objects. This is why historical cleaning and coordination with other holders of the repository are separate tasks. BFG focuses on the object-cleaning part rather than ordinary source-file editing.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Removes large blobs from historical commits, helping eliminate unwanted binary content from a repository.
- Deletes files and folders whose names match specified patterns, including historical copies no longer present in the working tree.
- Replaces sensitive text found inside committed files using user-supplied substitution patterns.
- Protects objects referenced by the latest commit by default, reducing the chance of unexpectedly changing the current project snapshot.
- Can target specific blob identifiers when the unwanted object is known precisely.
- Provides filters based on file sizes or file contents to restrict cleaning to relevant historical objects.
- Updates references and commits in a mirror-clone cleanup workflow before normal Git maintenance removes unreachable objects.
- Processes Git objects efficiently and can take advantage of multiple processor cores during substantial cleanup jobs.
Website: github.com/rtyley/bfg-repo-cleaner
Support:
Developer: Roberto Tyley
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
BFG Repo-Cleaner is written in Scala. Learn Scala with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Git Tools for Diff Review and Repository History | |
|---|---|
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