Permanently delete file from history, edit previous commits

Question

Unfortunately, I've previously pushed files into my BitBucket Mercurial repo that included some sensitive information (e.g. passwords).  I want to deal with this in two ways:

* There are some files which I want to delete permanently from my Mercurial history
* There are some files where I want to edit the revisions directly.  I do not want to delete these revisions because I want to keep a history of these revisions.

I am not worried about "other" users because this is a private repository and I am the only user/committer.  How do I do something like this?  I want to keep my current BitBucket Mercurial repo because I have a bunch of issues created, etc.

If I have to delete the repo, is the repo really deleted on a permanent basis?  Does BitBucket/Atlassian keep old copies of my repo in some sort of backup somewhere, etc.?

Jelena Vatavuk · Answer

What if the information that was exposed was personal information, rather than something that couldn't be changed like a password, so it needed to be somehow removed/hidden/blacked out from the history?

zzzz8 · Answer

Hi John, thanks for the answer.  I am definitely going to do what you suggest.

However, it still doesn't answer my original questions.  What do you suggest for my original concerns and questions?

John Garcia · Answer

We always recommend that, if sensitive data such as passwords or private keys are stored in a repository, that they be considered compromised and no longer usable. Please change your passwords.