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> In seeking to remove offending files with a simple deletion instead of a rebase, Winamp kept it available to those who know Git mechanics "Those who know Git

> In seeking to remove offending files with a simple deletion instead of a rebase, Winamp kept it available to those who know Git mechanics "Those who know Git mechanics" in this case is talking about extremely simple Git mechanics. Those who know more advanced Git mechanics would know that even a rebase is not sufficient to solve the problem of having pushed up secrets. Aside from the obvious problem of all the forks and previously-cloned copies, the offending commits will still also be available on GitHub (at least until the next garbage collection), they'll just have the message "This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository." Any links that include the old hash will still be available online and will still turn up the code you tried to delete.

speedyjay 2y ago
> offending commits will still also be available on GitHub (at least until the next garbage collection), No. Forever. Literally forever. GitHub does not run garbage collection, like, ever. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4367977/how-to-remove-a-dangling-commit-from-github/4368673#4368673 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4367977/how-to-remove-a-... Dangling commit from 14 years ago : https://github.com/nylen/connectbot/commit/1cd775d https://github.com/nylen/connectbot/commit/1cd775d There is only one way to delete data on github permanently and that's to request it from github support. Still, you would have better luck just deleting your repository and starting over from scratch, deleting your history locally and pushing from a pristine state.
- leni536 2y ago
  Hmm, do they count dangling commits towards your quota?
- account42 2y ago
  Which makes sense because just being orphaned within git doesn't mean that there aren't any external references from PRs or just comments that people expect to be able to view. And of course for actual secrets (as in passwords/keys/etc.) having deleting them from GitHub is not going to help you anyway as others could have made local copies that you have no control over.

speedyjay 2y ago

> offending commits will still also be available on GitHub (at least until the next garbage collection), No. Forever. Literally forever. GitHub does not run garbage collection, like, ever. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4367977/how-to-remove-a-dangling-commit-from-github/4368673#4368673 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4367977/how-to-remove-a-... Dangling commit from 14 years ago : https://github.com/nylen/connectbot/commit/1cd775d https://github.com/nylen/connectbot/commit/1cd775d There is only one way to delete data on github permanently and that's to request it from github support. Still, you would have better luck just deleting your repository and starting over from scratch, deleting your history locally and pushing from a pristine state.

leni536 2y ago
Hmm, do they count dangling commits towards your quota?
account42 2y ago
Which makes sense because just being orphaned within git doesn't mean that there aren't any external references from PRs or just comments that people expect to be able to view. And of course for actual secrets (as in passwords/keys/etc.) having deleting them from GitHub is not going to help you anyway as others could have made local copies that you have no control over.