Re: Trying to use git-filter-branch to compress history by removing large, obsolete binary files

[Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net>]

Elijah Newren wrote:
> On 10/7/07, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>> It should be as easy as git filter-branch and git clone.
> 
> Yes, a git filter-branch, git clone, AND git gc in the clone avoids
> all those funny ref editing commands.  However, cloning a 5.6GB repo
> (the size of one of the real repos I'm dealing with) will likely take
> a long time (and may push me past the limits of disk space), so using
> other steps to avoid the need to clone actually seems nicer.

You can just delete the logs and references that you don't want and run
git gc --prune.

However.

git gc creates a new pack before deleting the old one.  Garbage
collection usually does this; make a copy of everything to a new place
and then free all of the old space.  If *that* is a problem, ie you
don't have enough space for two copies of the repository and the junk,
you'll have to do a partial import, leave the junk you don't want
unpacked, cleanup and prune, then finish the import.  Which sounds like
a lot of hassle when you should really just find a place with more space
to work with!

Sam.