Question

Difference between `git rm file.txt` and manually deleting file from the working directory?

Whats the difference between git rm file.txt and manually deleting/removing file from the working directory subsequently committing this manual removal.

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Bobby Iliev • December 7, 2021

Hi there,

When you run just rm file_name it would remove the file from your local filesystem, and then you would also have to run git add file_name to remove it from git.

With git rm file_name, you skip the extra step of having to first delete the file with rm and then run git add.

If you want to remove the file from the Git index only and keep it locally, you can use the git rm --cached command instead.

Hope that this helps.

Regards, Bobby