Rewriting committed code in Git

Question

I have a git repo that I have decided to make public, which means moving database connection info into a .gitignored file. However, my repository history still contains the commits that I added and then removed the information.

I have tried the solution from this question using interactive rebase, but this seems to only allow me to change/reorder the commit message, not the code that was included in the commit.

Answer 1

You should read this article from Github:

Remove sensitive data

But, the most important part of the article is certainly this quote:

Danger: Once the commit has been pushed you should consider the data to be compromised. If you committed a password, change it! If you committed a key, generate a new one.