Remove a file Git tracks, rename another, and commit both so the history records them.
Welcome to THE FINAL LEVEL. In this last huzzah you will remove a file from your repository and rename another one.
At the start of this journey you REALLY needed hello.py. Now that you are a total Git pro, you have no more use for it. This happens regularly in software projects: files end up no longer needed, and removing them keeps the codebase neat and tidy.
So can't you just delete files willy-nilly, without telling Git? NO. If you delete a tracked file by hand, Git WILL notice, since it keeps track of every tracked file in the working directory. The key is to tell Git about the deletion so it becomes part of the history.
git rm <filename>
That deletes the file AND stages the deletion in one fell swoop.
Remove it:
git rm hello.pyGood work. git rm deleted hello.py from your table. So you are done now, right? WRONG.
git rm is similar to git add in that it stages a change for the next commit. The difference is that instead of staging a new or modified file, you are staging the deletion of a file. Look at the Staged files column: there it is.
The deletion is staged. Which command turns it into a page in the book?
Moving on to another common operation: renaming a file. Since Git tracks files by their names and paths, you must tell Git when you intend to rename a tracked file:
git mv <old-name> <new-name>
For practice, rename brew.py to coffee.py. Every earlier page still holds hello.py, by the way. It has not vanished from history, only from the table and from new pages.
Rename it:
git mv brew.py coffee.pygit mv took care of both renaming the file and telling Git about it. The rename is staged, and it needs committing just like the deletion did.
Commit the rename:
git commit -m "Rename brew.py to coffee.py"As you probably guessed, committing a rename also results in a brand new page at the front of the active branch. Hover it to see how Git records the change: brew.py became coffee.py.
Here is a cool detail. If you rename a file on your operating system, forget to tell Git, and then stage the new name with git add, Git is smart enough to detect the rename anyway. It compares the content of the old file and the new one, and if they match closely enough it treats the operation as a rename.
And if you delete or rename a file using Git, any earlier page still holds the old version. Open the book to a commit before the change, and there it is. So do not be too afraid of losing your work. Git keeps every version of every file safe and sound in the history.
The graph appears here when the first command runs. The simulations are drawn by git-sim from a real repository.
The scrapbook picture appears as the story is told.
Level 16 complete
🎉 New rank unlocked
You covered the ins and outs of git rm and git mv. Removing and renaming files are common operations that change your working directory, so the changes must be committed like any other. Earlier commits keep the versions from before the change, so nothing is ever truly lost. And with that... you are all done. Sixteen levels, one scrapbook. There are many more Git secrets to uncover, and every command you learned here can be run as git-sim <command> on your own repository to see exactly what it will do before you do it.
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