Remove a file from a Git repository without deleting it from the local filesystem

To remove an entire folder from the repo (like Resharper files), do this:

git rm -r --cached folderName

I had committed some resharper files, and did not want those to persist for other project users.

You can also remove files from the repository based on your .gitignore without deleting them from the local file system :

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i -X .gitignore`

Also, if you have commited sensitive data (e.g. a file containing passwords), you should completely delete it from the history of the repository. Here's a guide explaining how to do that: http://help.github.com/remove-sensitive-data/

A more generic solution:

1. Edit .gitignore file.

   ECHO mylogfile.log >> .gitignore

2. Remove all items from index.

   git rm -r -f --cached .

3. Rebuild index.

   git add .

4. Make new commit

   git commit -m "Removed mylogfile.log"

As per my Answer here: How to remove a directory in my GitHub repository?

To remove folder/directory or file only from git repository and not from the local try 3 simple steps.

Steps to remove directory

git rm -r --cached File-or-FolderName
git commit -m "Removed folder from repository"
git push origin master

Steps to ignore that folder in next commits

To ignore that folder from next commits make one file in root named .gitignore and put that folders name into it. You can put as many as you want

.gitignore file will be look like this

/FolderName

Git lets you ignore those files by assuming they are unchanged. This is done by running the git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file.txt command. Once marking a file as such, git will completely ignore any changes on that file; they will not show up when running git status or git diff, nor will they ever be committed.

(From https://help.github.com/articles/ignoring-files)

Hence, not deleting it, but ignoring changes to it forever. I think this only works locally, so co-workers can still see changes to it unless they run the same command as above. (Still need to verify this though.)

Note: This isn't answering the question directly, but is based on follow up questions in the comments of the other answers.

Above answers didn't work for me. I used filter-branch to remove all committed files

remove a file from a git repository with:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm  file'

remove a folder from a git repository with:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory'

This removes the directory or file from all the commits

you can specify a commit by using:

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf directory' HEAD

Or an range

git filter-branch --tree-filter 'rm -rf vendor/gems' t49dse..HEAD

To push everything to remote, you can do:

git push origin master --force