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Maybe this is not that much relevant for DVCSs but in 'classic' VCSs such as SVN an 'obliterate' command would be quite useful, think about the case when someone accidentally commits something highly sensitive (such as private keys) to version control. People make mistakes all the time, either way.

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you can use commands like git filter-branch & git rebase to change your history - http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ch05.htm...

"git rebase" on its own does not permanently alter history. It creates a new branch that looks like a new history, but you can get back to the original history.

"git gc" will prune the unused old histories for that permanent effect.

even "git gc" will not do it for a while. the old history will still be referenced from the reflog for some time (I think default is 30 days)

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