Subject: Re: GDPR compliance best practices?

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2018 01:00:37 +0200

On Fri, Jun 08 2018, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Separate from that legal context, though, I think it's an interesting
> feature request.  I don't think it goes far enough: I would like a way
> to erase arbitrary information from the history in a repository.  For
> example, if I accidentally check in an encryption key in my repository
> as content or a commit message, I would like a way to remove it,
> assuming that others who fetch from the same repo are willing to
> cooperate with me, of course (i.e. in place of the object, the server
> would store a placeholder and an _advisory_ token allowing clients to
> know (1) that this object was deleted, (2) what object to use instead,
> and (3) an explanatory note about why the deletion occured; clients
> could make whatever use of this information they choose).
>
> I've seen some discussion on this subject at
> https://www.mercurial-scm.org/pipermail/mercurial/2008-March/017802.html
> long ago and have some ideas of my own, but nothing concrete yet.
> Anyway, I thought it might be useful to get people's minds working on
> it.

You may find it interesting to look at how git-annex-forget does this:
https://git-annex.branchable.com/git-annex-forget/ &
http://git-annex.branchable.com/devblog/day_-4__forgetting/