Question

Is it possible to “refresh” a git repository after updating the gitignore file?

I just added more ignorations(?) to my gitignore and would like to remove stuff already in the repo matching the new file.

Answer 1

The solution mentioned in ".gitignore file not ignoring" is a bit extreme, but should work:

# rm all files
git rm -r --cached .
# add all files as per new .gitignore
git add .
# now, commit for new .gitignore to apply
git commit -m ".gitignore is now working"

(make sure to commit first your changes you want to keep, to avoid any incident as jball037 comments below.
The --cached option will keep your files untouched on your disk though.)

You also have other more fine-grained solution in the blog post "Making Git ignore already-tracked files":

git rm --cached `git ls-files -i --exclude-standard`

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Bassim suggests in his edit:

Files with space in their paths

In case you get an error message like fatal: path spec '...' did not match any files, there might be files with spaces in their path.

You can remove all other files with option --ignore-unmatch:

git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch `git ls-files -i --exclude-standard`

but unmatched files will remain in your repository and will have to be removed explicitly by enclosing their path with double quotes:

git rm --cached "<path.to.remaining.file>"