How to reduce github repo size in remote?

[Saranpjs727]

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I have a GitHub repository that contains nearly 21GB of data.

When I try to retrieve unreachable objects using git fsck --full --unreachable, I see many entries.

I removed all unreachable objects using git gc --prune=now.

I performed all these steps locally, and the size of the repository was reduced to 11GB.

Is there any way to run the garbage collector manually or via a script in remote?

[arslan578]

Yes, you can run garbage collection on the remote repository, but it's important to note that Git services like GitHub typically don't allow users to directly run Git's garbage collection (git gc) on the remote server for security and stability reasons.

[LiteBrite82]

Thanks for posting in the GitHub Community, @Saranpjs727 !

We're happy you're here. You are more likely to get a useful response if you are posting your question in the applicable category, the Discussions category is solely related to conversations around the GitHub product Discussions. This question should be in the Repositories category. I've gone ahead and moved it for you. Good luck!

[Saranpjs727]

thank you

[Kennedy200]

Running git gc on a remote repository directly (e.g., on GitHub or other Git hosting services) is not possible. The garbage collection process is generally a local operation, and remote Git hosting services like GitHub automatically perform it periodically to clean up orphaned or unreachable objects. However, you can try a few alternatives to help reduce the size of your remote repository:

Clean up your repository locally using git filter-repo or git filter-branch.
Run git gc --aggressive --prune=now.
Force push the cleaned repository to the remote.
For larger files, consider moving to Git LFS.

Let me know if this helped

[stefisha]

Might be useful to run git reflog expire --expire=now --all to expire old reflogs first.
Other than that this should work

[Saranpjs727]

Thanks for the information. I will try it.

Instead of running git gc manually, according to https://git-scm.com/docs/git-gc, Git runs git gc --auto by default when there are more than 6,700 loose objects or more than 50 pack files in the repository. using (gc.auto and gc.autopacklimit)

Would it be a good approach to customize these values so we can control when garbage collection runs automatically?

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