Git - How to remove a large file from commit history so I can push repository?

I managed to fix it using the thread I linked above. Specifically I did something similar to Darren's answer. I'll put it here for your convenience:

This is the best way:
http://github.com/guides/completely-remove-a-file-from-all-revisions

Just be sure to backup the copies of the files first.

EDIT

The edit by [Neon][1] got unfortunately rejected during review. See Neons post below, it might contain useful information!

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/users/309261/neon

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E.g. to remove all *.gz files accidentally committed into git repository:

$ du -sh .git ==> e.g. 100M $ git filter-branch --index-filter 'git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch *.gz' HEAD $ git push origin master --force $ rm -rf .git/refs/original/ $ git reflog expire --expire=now --all $ git gc --prune=now $ git gc --aggressive --prune=now 

That still didn't work for me? (I am currently at git version 1.7.6.1)

$ du -sh .git ==> e.g. 100M 

Not sure why, since I only had ONE master branch. Anyways, I finally got my git repo truely cleaned up by pushing into a new empty and bare git repository, e.g.

$ git init --bare /path/to/newcleanrepo.git $ git push /path/to/newcleanrepo.git master $ du -sh /path/to/newcleanrepo.git ==> e.g. 5M 

(yes!)

Then I clone that to a new directory and moved over it's .git folder into this one. e.g.

$ mv .git ../large_dot_git $ git clone /path/to/newcleanrepo.git ../tmpdir $ mv ../tmpdir/.git . $ du -sh .git ==> e.g. 5M 

(yeah! finally cleaned up!)

After verifying that all is well, then you can delete the ../large_dot_git and ../tmpdir directories (maybe in a couple weeks or month from now, just in case...)

In short: I filtered the branch, created a new bare repo, pushed the master to it, cloned it into a new directory and replaced my project's git directory with the git directory from the clone.

You need to expire entries in the reflog otherwise it will hold references to those old blobs, then garbage collect it.

git reflog expire --expire=now --all git gc --prune=now --aggressive 

If that doesn't work try the BFG tool to clean your repo. Do as they say, make a copy of the repository first.