Developers often encounter a situation where they do not want to commit all created and modified project files and temporarily ignore them from the staging area. In addition, they want to keep these changes without updating the repository. In this situation, you need to temporarily untrace these files. More specifically, the commands “$ git rm -cached” and “$ git update-index” can be useful for this corresponding purpose.
This post discusses
: Method 1: How to untrack Git files temporarily using “git
- rm -cached” command? Method 2: How to crawl git files temporarily using “git update-index” command?
Now, move towards the detail of the methods mentioned above!
Method 1: How to untrace git files temporarily using “git rm -cached” command? The “$
git rm –
cached” command can temporarily delete the specified file from the staging area and untrace it. To implement this operation for better understanding, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Move to local repository
First, navigate to the particular Git repository by running the command “cd
“: <img
src=”https://linuxhint.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/How-to-Untrack-Files-From-Git-Temporarily-1.png” alt=”” />
Step 2: Content List
Run the following command to view the list of the current repository content
:
<img
src=”https://linuxhint.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/How-to-Untrack-Files-From-Git-Temporarily-2.png” alt=”” /> Step
3: Create
a new text
file To create a new text file in the repository, use the “touch” command
:
Step 4: Staging the file
Untrack Then run the command provided below to add
the text file to the staging area:
Step 5: Temporarily
delete the file from the staging area
Now, delete the staging area file by running the “git rm” command along with the “-cached” option ” and the particular file name
:
Step 6: Check
the repository status Run the
“git status.” command to check the repository status
:
As you can see, the specified file has been temporarily removed from the staging index:
Let’s move on to the next method to
untrack Git files temporarily.
Method 2: How to uncrawl Git files temporarily using “git update-index” command?
Sometimes, developers don’t want to keep track of all the files created in the staging area and want to ignore them temporarily. To do this, follow the steps below.
Step
1: Ignore particular
file
To start ignoring the desired text file with changes, run the provided command along with the path of the desired
file: Here, the “-
assume-unchanged” option will assume that the file has not been changed and ignore modifications
:
Step 2: Move
to Git repository Now,
navigate to the particular local Git repository using the following
command:
Step 3: Check the status of
ignored files
Now, to make sure that the specified file is ignored correctly, run the command “git ls-files” with the option “-v “: Here
, the command “h” indicates that the file is
not temporarily crawled from the repository and “H” shows that the file is crawled
:
Step 4: Return to the Git root directory
Next, return to the Git root directory using the “cd..”
: <img
src=”https://linuxhint.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/How-to-Untrack-Files-From-Git-Temporarily-10.png” alt=”” />
Step 5: Crawl a particular ignore
file
After performing the desired operations in the Git repository, trace the ignored file and run the following command along with the “-no-assume-unchanged” option
:
<img
src=”https://linuxhint.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/How-to-Untrack-Files-From-Git-Temporarily-11.png” alt=”” /> Step
6: Move
to the Git repository
Next, navigate to the local Git repository using the command provided
:
Step 7: Check the current status of the file
Lastly, check the above status of the ignored
file:
As you can see, the status of the file highlighted below is “H“, indicating that the file was successfully crawled:
That’s
it! We have provided different ways to untrack files from the Git repository temporarily.
Conclusion
Two different commands are used to untrace files from the Git repository, which are the command “$ git rm -cached <file-name>” or “$ git update-index -assume-unchanged <path/to/file>“. To trace the ignored file, the command “$ git update-index -no-assume-unchanged <path/to/file>” can be used. This post illustrated the different commands for untracking files from the Git repository temporarily.