git rm

Delete from the working tree and stage the removal.

🎯 What & why

Remove a tracked file from the working tree and stage the removal. One operation instead of two.

🧠 Mental model

git rm deletes the file from disk and removes its entry from the index. --cached is the variant that only removes from the index, leaving the file on disk — useful when you accidentally tracked something you meant to gitignore.

🛠️ Synopsis

git rm [-f | --force] [-n] [-r] [--cached] [--ignore-unmatch]
       [--quiet] [--pathspec-from-file=<file> [--pathspec-file-nul]]
       [--] [<pathspec>...]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`-r`	Recurse into directories.
`--cached`	Remove from index only — keep the file on disk.
`-f, --force`	Override the safety check that blocks removal of files with staged or unstaged changes.
`-n, --dry-run`	Show what would happen, do nothing.

💡 Use cases

Deleting source files that have moved or been replaced.
Untracking files now covered by .gitignore.
Removing build artifacts that crept into commits.

🧪 Examples

Remove a tracked file.

$ git rm secret.txt

Untrack a file you accidentally added (keep on disk).

$ git rm --cached config/local.yaml

Remove a directory recursively.

$ git rm -r build/

🎓 Recommendations

git rm --cached after adding a .gitignore entry — Git only honors gitignore for untracked files.
When you delete a file with rm (not git rm), use git add -u to stage the deletion.

🪤 Common pitfalls

--cached does not remove the blob from history. The file still exists in past commits.
Removing a file that has uncommitted changes requires -f. Don't blanket-add it to scripts.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.