git - Why does my remote repo increase in size after bfg clean up?

Question

Used BFG to clean repo with large files.

I tried to follow step from bfg tutorial page.

Steps I followed:

git clone --mirror myrepo.git

java -jar bfg-1.13.0.jar --no-blob-protection --delete-folders "{large_folder}" test_repo.git

git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive

git push

The git push did not worked for me I had to change denyNonFastforwards = true to denyNonFastforwards = false in my remote repo's config file.

So the problem I am having is the local repo size get shrunk but when I push to the remote remote repo size increase.

The strange thing is when I clone --mirror that remote repo locally and see the size, it actually is small.

Answer 1

You need to run 'git gc' on the remote repo too, which will trigger a collection of the now unused git objects.

More commonly, users have a git hosting service like GitHub as their remote, and the hosting service will periodically run 'git gc' for the users.

When you clone from a remote, only the essential data is sent- so you get only get the cleaned history, even if the remote repo has a bunch of unused git data lying around.