Re: Configuring git to for forget removed files

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Andrew Benton <b3nton@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a project that I store in a git repository. It's a bunch of source
> tarballs and
> some bash scripts to compile it all. Git makes it easy to distribute any
> changes I make
> across the computers I run. The problem I have is that over time the
> repository gets ever
> larger. When I update to a newer version of something I git rm the old
> tarball but git
> still keeps a copy and the folder grows ever larger.

You can use 'git filter-branch', as Tim already mentioned, or use a
git 'shallow clone' to only get the most recent versions of things.

Alternatively, have you thought about storing *uncompressed* tarballs
in git instead of compressed ones?  Then when you update to a newer
version, git can compute an xdelta from one to the other and store
only the changes.  That means you can have full history *and* not
waste too much disk space.  Git compresses the objects anyway when it
stores them in the repository.

Have fun,

Avery