Creds:
http://stevelorek.com/how-to-shrink-a-git-repository.html
Cleaning the files
Cleaning the file will take a while, depending on how busy your repository has been. You just need one command to begin the process:
$ git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat --index-filter 'git rm -r --cached --ignore-unmatch filename' --prune-empty -f -- --all This command is adapted from other sources—the principle addition is --tag-name-filter cat which ensures tags are rewritten as well.
After this command has finished executing, your repository should now be cleaned, with all branches and tags in tact.
Reclaim space
While we may have rewritten the history of the repository, those files still exist in there, stealing disk space and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Let’s nuke the bastards:
$ rm -rf .git/refs/original/ $ git reflog expire --expire=now --all $ git gc --prune=now $ git gc --aggressive --prune=now Now we have a fresh, clean repository. In my case, it went from 180MB to 7MB.
Push the cleaned repository
Now we need to push the changes back to the remote repository, so that nobody else will suffer the pain of a 180MB download.
$ git push origin --force --all The --all argument pushes all your branches as well. That’s why we needed to clone them at the start of the process.
Then push the newly-rewritten tags:
$ git push origin --force --tags Tell your teammates
Anyone else with a local clone of the repository will need to either use git rebase, or create a fresh clone, otherwise when they push again, those files are going to get pushed along with it and the repository will be reset to the state it was in before.