Untrack file without deleting it?

Question

I have a tracked file in a git repository. How do I untrack this file without deleting it using magit?

score 25 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:38

25

Hitting i will gitignore the file and untrack it from the git repository.

Behind the scenes, it does git rm --cached - More info about this git command from a StackOverflow question

edited May 23 '17 at 12:38

Community

1

answered Feb 17 '15 at 14:21

Kaushal Modi

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Note that you don't need to add it to the gitignore file. Just discard(I believe by default "k") changes on gitignore after i. – deadghost Feb 17 '15 at 14:51
Discarding (using k) just reverts the file contents to its last committed state; it does not untrack it. To test it, modify the file you just discarded, hit g in the magit buffer to refresh the contents and you will see that file appear once again in the Unstaged section. – Kaushal Modi Feb 17 '15 at 14:56
I mean discarding the changes on .gitignore. – deadghost Feb 17 '15 at 14:58
Alright, I now get what you are saying. First hit i on the file you want to untrack and then hit k on .gitignore. For my use case, if there's a file I want to untrack, I usually want to gitignore it too. That way my magit buffer stays clean and empty :) – Kaushal Modi Feb 17 '15 at 15:01
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If you don't need to add the file to gitignore, use K (that's uppercase k). – Patrick Fournier May 05 '16 at 16:26
Where do you view the files in the first place? – mcp May 20 '21 at 23:35
@young_souvlaki In the Magit status buffer. – Kaushal Modi May 21 '21 at 03:37
@KaushalModi My status buffer shows only untracked files when there are no changes. – mcp May 24 '21 at 15:30

score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 16 '16 at 21:53

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In the Magit buffer, hit K (uppercase k) on the file. It works with magit 2.3; I don't know for earlier versions.

answered Feb 16 '16 at 21:53

Patrick Fournier

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f6a6f40fe8321f3ceb4b8ea9581e450149fea66a, looks like it's since 2.1 – npostavs Feb 17 '16 at 22:12
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I feel like this should be the accepted answer for the question asked, even though the others were helpful. – salotz May 23 '16 at 21:19

tarsius · Answer 3 · 2015-07-03T13:04:33.150

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Use M-x magit-file-untrack from a buffer visiting a tracked file or from a Magit buffer. When the buffer visits a file then that file is offered as default choice.

When point is on a file in a Magit buffer, then that is also offered as default. You might also want to add the new magit-insert-tracked-files to magit-status-sections-hook, then a tree of all tracked files is inserted into the status buffer (but doing so might not be good for performance in big repositories).

edited Jul 03 '15 at 13:04

answered Mar 02 '15 at 13:53

tarsius

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In spacemacs this is bound to X. – mcp Mar 15 '22 at 21:51

Untrack file without deleting it?

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