Removing file history from repository

[Jelmer Vernooij]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 10:19:50AM -0600, John Arbash Meinel wrote:
> Enrique Ramirez wrote:
> > Hi, I was wondering if there's a way to remove all the versioning
> > information of a file in the repository. It seems that by mistake I've
> > been versioning some temporary binary files that can get pretty big
> > (well in relation to the rest of the repository, anyway). I did a bzr
> > remove on them already, but I'm guessing the older revisions would
> > still have the tracking information on these files. Tried checking bzr
> > help remove but I didn't see any mention of this possibility.

> > // --------------------------------------
> > Enrique Ramirez Irizarry
> > Lead Developer
> > Indie Code Labs
> > http://www.indiecodelabs.com
> It is not directly possible to change the committed history of a branch.
> (in your case that is going back and saying that these files really
> shouldn't be there).

> It *should* be possible to create a new branch with completely new
> history that is very similar to your existing branch, but doesn't have
> those files. This would be done using the "bzr-rebase" plugin. Though
> I'll admit I'm not 100% sure if it supports rebasing/replay with a file
> filter. (It should be possible, but I don't know that it has been
> implemented. Another possibility would be to "bzr fast-export" the
> history, edit that stream, and then "bzr fast-import" it.)
FWIW, bzr-rebase can't do this yet. 

Cheers,

Jelmer
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