Remove large pack file created by git

Question

I checked a load of files in to a branch and merged and then had to remove them and now I m left with a large  pack file that I don t know how to get rid of    I deleted all the files using git rm -rf xxxxxx and I also ran the --cached option as well   Can someone tell me how I can remove a large  pack file that is currently in the following directory    git objects pack pack-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx pack  Do I just need to remove the branch that I still have but am no longer using  Or is there something else I need to run   I m not sure how much difference it makes but it shows a padlock against the file   Thanks    EDIT  Here are some excerpts from my bash history that should give an idea how I managed to get into this state  assume at this point I m working on a git branch called  my-branch  and I ve got a folder containing more folders files    git add   git commit -m  Adding my branch changes to master  git checkout master git merge my-branch git rm -rf unwanted folder  rm -rf unwanted folder       not sure why I ran this as well but I did    I thought I also ran the following but it doesn t appear in the bash history with the others    git rm -rf --cached unwanted folder    I also thought I ran some git commands  like git gc  to try to tidy up the pack file but they don t appear in the  bash history file either

User · Accepted Answer

The issue is that  even though you removed the files  they are still present in previous revisions  That s the whole point of git  is that even if you delete something  you can still get it back by accessing the history   What you are looking to do is called rewriting history  and it involved the git filter-branch command   GitHub has a good explanation of the issue on their site  https   help github com articles remove-sensitive-data  To answer your question more directly  what you basically need to run is this command with unwanted filename or folder replaced accordingly   git filter-branch --index-filter  git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch unwanted filename or folder  --prune-empty   This will remove all references to the files from the active history of the repo   Next step  to perform a GC cycle to force all references to the file to be expired and purged from the packfile  Nothing needs to be replaced in these commands   git for-each-ref --format  delete   refname   refs original   git update-ref --stdin   or  for older git versions  e g  1 8 3 1  which don t support --stdin   git update-ref   git for-each-ref --format  delete   refname   refs original  git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now

User · Answer

Scenario A  If your large files were only added to a branch  you don t need to run git filter-branch  You just need to delete the branch and run garbage collection   git branch -D mybranch git reflog expire --expire-unreachable all --all git gc --prune all   Scenario B  However  it looks like based on your bash history  that you did merge the changes into master  If you haven t shared the changes with anyone  no git push yet   The easiest thing would be to reset master back to before the merge with the branch that had the big files  This will eliminate all commits from your branch and all commits made to master after the merge  So you might lose changes -- in addition to the big files -- that you may have actually wanted   git checkout master git log   Find the commit hash just before the merge git reset --hard  lt commit hash gt    Then run the steps from the scenario A   Scenario C  If there were other changes from the branch or changes on master after the merge that you want to keep  it would be best to rebase master and selectively include commits that you want   git checkout master git log   Find the commit hash just before the merge git rebase -i  lt commit hash gt    In your editor  remove lines that correspond to the commits that added the large files  but leave everything else as is  Save and quit  Your master branch should only contain what you want  and no large files  Note that git rebase without -p will eliminate merge commits  so you ll be left with a linear history for master after  lt commit hash gt   This is probably okay for you  but if not  you could try with -p  but git help rebase says combining -p with the -i option explicitly is generally not a good idea unless you know what you are doing   Then run the commands from scenario A

User · Answer

I am a little late for the show but in case the above answer didn t solve the query then I found another way  Simply remove the specific large file from  pack  I had this issue where I checked in a large 2GB file accidentally  I followed the steps explained in this link  http   www ducea com 2012 02 07 howto-completely-remove-a-file-from-git-history

User · Answer

this is more of a handy solution than a coding one  zip the file  Open the zip in file view format  different from unzipping   Delete the  pack file  Unzip and replace the folder  Works like a charm

User · Answer

As loganfsmyth already stated in his answer  you need to purge git history because the files continue to exist there even after deleting them from the repo  Official GitHub docs recommend BFG which I find easier to use than filter-branch   Deleting files from history  Download BFG from their website  Make sure you have java installed  then create a mirror clone and purge history  Make sure to replace YOUR FILE NAME with the name of the file you d like to delete   git clone --mirror git   example com some-big-repo git java -jar bfg jar --delete-files YOUR FILE NAME some-big-repo git cd some-big-repo git git reflog expire --expire now --all  amp  amp  git gc --prune now --aggressive git push     Delete a folder  Same as above but use --delete-folders  java -jar bfg jar --delete-folders YOUR FOLDER NAME some-big-repo git     Other options  BFG also allows for even fancier options  see docs  like these   Remove all files bigger than 100M from history   java -jar bfg jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M some-big-repo git     Important   When running BFG  be careful that both YOUR FILE NAME and YOUR FOLDER NAME are indeed just file folder names  They re not paths  so something like foo bar jpg will not work  Instead all files folders with the specified name will be removed from repo history  no matter which path or branch they existed

User · Answer

One option   run git gc manually to condense a number of pack files into one or a few pack files   This operation is persistent  i e  the large pack file will retain its compression behavior  so it may be beneficial to compress a repository periodically with git gc --aggressive  Another option is to save the code and  git somewhere and then delete the  git and start again using this existing code  creating a new git repository  git init

User · Answer

Run the following command  replacing PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA with the path to the file you want to remove  not just its filename  These arguments will    Force Git to process  but not check out  the entire history of every branch and tag Remove the specified file  as well as any empty commits generated as a result Overwrite your existing tags   git filter-branch --force --index-filter  git rm --cached --ignore-unmatch PATH-TO-YOUR-FILE-WITH-SENSITIVE-DATA  --prune-empty --tag-name-filter cat -- --all   This will forcefully remove all references to the files from the active history of the repo   Next step  to perform a GC cycle to force all references to the file to be expired and purged from the pack file  Nothing needs to be replaced in these commands   git update-ref -d refs original refs remotes origin master git for-each-ref --format  delete   refname   refs original   git update-ref --stdin git reflog expire --expire now --all git gc --aggressive --prune now

[git] Remove large .pack file created by git

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