🧹 Git Ignore Clean History

Remove previously committed files that should have been ignored via .gitignore — interactively and safely.

🔗 npx:

npx @scripting-bear/git-ignore-clean-history

💡 Why?

Ever cloned a repo and realized:

• Someone committed node_modules, .env, .DS_Store, or Pods/?
• Now the repo is bloated, slow, and filled with junk?

This tool helps you:

✅ Analyze your Git history ✅ Match committed files against .gitignore ✅ Confirm what should be deleted ✅ Safely rewrite history with git-filter-repo

⚙️ What It Does (Steps)

1. Extract all files ever committed in Git history
2. Match them against .gitignore rules (including deep paths)
3. Prompt you to confirm
4. Run git-filter-repo to remove them from history
5. You force-push a clean repo ✨

🧪 Example

npx @scripting-bear/git-ignore-clean-history --verbose

Interactive output:

📦 Step 1: Extracting all files ever committed...
✅ Extracted 20,387 unique file paths to 'all-ever-files.txt'.

👀 Do you want to continue to match these files with .gitignore? [y/N]: y
✅ Found 37 ignore patterns.
✅ Matched 643 files.
📝 Matches written to 'files-to-remove.txt'.

⚠️ Do you want to clean them from history? [y/N]: y

🛠 Requirements

• Git installed
• Python 3.6+
• git-filter-repo

If git-filter-repo is missing, the tool will prompt to download it.

👤 Author

Made with frustration by @scripting-bear

🤝 With technical assistance, scripting support & optimization from ChatGPT by OpenAI.

🙌 Inspired by

• git-filter-repo
• BFG Repo-Cleaner

🔒 Note: This tool rewrites history. Push your cleaned repo with force, and share a note with collaborators.