Lifecode

I spent the whole night trying to figure out how to revert commits, and remove my sensitive information from my public repositories. This helped me realized how important it is to learn and practice git.

I mostly do open source projects on C#, and I always put to-change data like API keys in app.config. At first, I thought I was on the safe road, while making git ignore changes from my app.config file.

git update-index --assume-unchanged app.config

But then I was wrong. I am actually partially on the safe road.

Several hours ago, while working on a project, I noticed that Settings.settings and Settings.Designer.cs updates whenever I change something in my settings variables. Upon looking at the contents of the files, panic filled my soul and I just realized that it’s not just app.config that I should be untracking.

I furiously searched for a way to resolve this issue, and thinking that I have to go over one commit at a time, I started to think that I made a very huge mistake. I have a database connection string and my personal phone number in two separate projects in GitHub.

Luckily I found this article. Without further munching, I applied the commands to every repository I have, wherein I used app.config to store sensitive data.

Afterwards, I ran the command I used with app.config on Settings.settings and Settings.Designer.cs. Now I am both ashamed to be in such situation, and happy to learn something new.

Sometimes, we want our desktop to be clean. No icons, no shortcuts, no documents, nothing but the taskbar and the wallpaper. But wait, there’s this Recycle Bin icon, and I cannot remove it. Well, I got good news for you, I’ll show you how to remove that unwanted (that depends) icon from your clean desktop.

First, press Window Key + R, to bring up the Run Dialog Box. Then type in gpedit.msc. Group Policy Editor will pop up, and just head to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Desktop. On the right panel box, look for Remove Recycle Bin icon from desktop, just like in the picture below.

Remove Recycle Bin icon from desktop

Simply Double Click it, and choose Enabled. Click on Ok/Apply, and you’re good to go. This might require a reboot, and patiently restart your computer. After that, the icon will be gone from your desktop.