Git: cannot run git 'rm -rf . --cached'

Question

I'm working with Rubygems, and it's caching files in git a lot. The easy solution is just to run git rm -rf . --cached, but when I run it, this message appears:

fatal: pathspec '' did not match any files

Even if I run git rm -rf ./\* --cached, it still returns:

fatal: pathspec '*' did not match any files

Any solutions?

Answer 1

The correct syntax would be:

git rm -r -f --cached -- .

(ie the path should be at the end)

But if git status mentions that no files have been added, then nothing 'cached' would be there to be removed.

When --cached is given, the staged content has to match:

• either the tip of the branch
• or the file on disk,

allowing the file to be removed from just the index.