How To Cleanup Your Local Git Repository Using BFG

This is a thing that you can do to clean up your local git repo AFTER doing a commit and before pushing to origin.

PREWORK

1. Download BFG.jar

https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/   https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/madgag/bfg/1.13.0/bfg-1.13.0.jar

2. Create directory structure

mkdir -p ~/.binaries/

3. Move bfg in to place and chmod it

mv bfg-1.13.0.jar ~/.binaries/ && chmod 777 ~/.binaries/bfg-1.13.0.jar

4. setup BASH_PROFILE

echo 'alias bfg="java -jar ~/.binaries/bfg-1.13.0.jar"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo "export PATH=/Users/$(whoami)/.binaries:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'alias bfg="java -jar ~/.binaries/bfg-1.13.0.jar"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo "export PATH=/Users/$(whoami)/.binaries:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile

5. source it

source ~/.bash_profile

Cleaning repo with BFG

Now what do we do.

I will create a new folder, and then create a git repo in that folder.
This would be the same as doing a git clone...

mkdir testing-bfg
cd testing-bfg/
git init

Now I am going to make a file and add some things to it

vi README.md
# do things
# do things that are bad
PASSWORD=my_password
AWS_TOKEN=1234

add it to my git repo

git add README.md

make a commit to the repo for the file

git commit -a -m "I did an initial commit and it is bad"

I am going to attempt to push to master, or don't when I realize I did a bad thing

git push origin master
*** pre-receive hook fires and stops me from pushing, so the push fails.

I don't push, but the commit is already in my history, I need to clean it.

This is how you fix it.

In order for BFG to run properly you cannot run it from the source of your git repo, you need to be at least out by one folder.

cd ../
vi ~/my-mess
#this file is now located at your home folder as denoted by the ~/   thingy
#my-mess file
# these are the strings that you want out of your repo and commit history
AWS_TOKEN=X1V34
PASSWORD=

Now we have our dirty git repo located at

testing-bfg

We also have a text file with the "things we want to remove from the repo" that is located at

~/my-mess

We are going to run the bfg command which is aliased to

bfg

but you could also do this without the alias,

java -jar bfg-1.13.0.jar

The

--no-blob-protection

is telling bfg to rewrite my current history in all my branches and make clean.

bfg --replace-text ~/my-mess testing-bfg/ --no-blob-protection

Now you will have your file in a "modified" state according to git.
This is because your local file still has the BAD words in it, however your commit history does not.

Therefore it is considered modified.

Now, go through and change your local file to fix your shame and do a new commit and move forward.

PROFIT