To remove a .env file from your repository's commit history (so it no longer appears in any commit on GitHub), you need to rewrite your Git history to erase all traces of that file. Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Ensure .env is in your .gitignore to prevent future commits:

    echo ".env" >> .gitignore
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "Add .env to .gitignore"

  2. Remove the .env file from the latest commit:

    git rm --cached .env
git commit -m "Remove .env from repository"

  3. Erase .env from all previous commits (requires git-filter-repo, the modern/fastest tool):

    # Install git-filter-repo if not present (https://github.com/newren/git-filter-repo)
git filter-repo --path .env --invert-paths

    If you can't use git-filter-repo, you can use the older (slower) filter-branch:

    git filter-branch --force --index-filter "git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch .env" --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all

  4. Force-push your cleaned history to GitHub:

    git push origin --force --all
git push origin --force --tags

  5. Tell collaborators to re-clone or hard reset, as history rewriting can break clones.

  6. Rotate any secrets in .env, because anyone who cloned the repo before this can still access them.

After these steps, the .env file will be gone from your commit history and will not show up in history or on GitHub. If you need a tailored guide for your OS or setup, let me know!