How to delete a file from a range of commits if it was created in an earlier commit?

[xlexle]

Hello,

It took me a while to realize that my attempts to delete a file from a specified range of --refs was not working because the file was created earlier. Example command:

git-filter-repo --invert-paths --path FILE --force --refs HEAD~5..

This deletes FILE only if FILE was created in the last 5 commits. If the file was created in HEAD~6, git-filter-repo happily processes all of the last 5 commits without any notification that FILE was not deleted. I don't know if this should be a bug report or if this is intended behavior.

My question is, how do I go about deleting FILE from the range HEAD~5..HEAD if FILE was created in HEAD~6 or earlier?

[newren]

You'd have to use a --commit-callback, and add an extra FileChange for the deletion of the file in question. It'd look something like this:

git filter-repo --refs HEAD~5.. --commit-callback "commit.file_changes += [
FileChange(b'D', b'PATH/TO/FILENAME')]"

Technically, my command is trying to delete PATH/TO/FILENAME from every commit in the range HEAD~5..HEAD, which might feel slightly like overkill (if you have a linear history, you only need it to be deleted in HEAD~4), but deleting a file that didn't exist in the parent commit is translated by fast-import to a no-op, so it doesn't hurt anything.