Deleting a sensitive file from Git (including history) starting a certain commit hash

git_delete_sensitive.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

PATH_TO_BE_DELETED="${1}"

if [[ -z ${PATH_TO_BE_DELETED} ]]; then
  echo "Path variable a is not set"
  exit 1
else
  echo "Deleting $PATH_TO_BE_DELETED"
fi

STARTING_HASH=$(git log --pretty=format:"%h" -- ${PATH_TO_BE_DELETED} | tail -1)

echo "Starting $STARTING_HASH"

git filter-branch \
  --index-filter "git rm --cached -f -r --ignore-unmatch $PATH_TO_BE_DELETED" \
  --prune-empty -- $STARTING_HASH..HEAD

When completed, you need to *force push the changes upstream

git push -f origin/master

If someone has a local version affected by the rewrites they need to change their local branches to upstream:

git fetch origin
git reset --hard origin/master