Question

I know I can remove a file from tracking and have it deleted with git rm <file>

or if I want to keep the file and just remove it from tracking I can use git rm --cached <file>

but what are the repercussions of this when I push it to the repository and other people pull from it? Makes sense that git rm --cached <file> would just remove it from tracking for everyone and they still have the file in their directory, but what about git rm <file>, will it just remove the file from tracking for other users or will it delete the actual file for them once they pull as well?

Answer 1

It will delete that file for them, too. Actually that will happen in both cases – no matter if you use --cached or not since what you eventually commit will be the same thing: The deletion of the file.