GIT: fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed (tried to allocate 889192448 bytes)

Question

I have this error while pushing my project to tfs GIT.

fatal: Out of memory, malloc failed (tried to allocate 889192448 bytes)

Answer 1

I had the same problem on windows, exept with checkout another branch. Finally, I couldn't either pull or fetch my project beacause I got out of memory error ("try to allocate..." etc). I did the trick with increasing git pack and core limits but it didn't work for me. Finally, I deleted git from computer and install again. Problem was solved.

Answer 2

In my experience this can happen for a few reasons:

1. Most commonly, there are one or more files that are too large for Git to handle. In my experience this is usually a .sql, .zip, .gz or media file. Simply removing them from the repository, however, won't resolve the issue because it's in the actual Git history (inside the .git folder both on your local machine and / or on your remote server that you're pulling from). I have yet to discover a way to completely remove it from all Git history, so I usually create a new repo, create a .gitignore file in that new repo and then copy my files over there. Not a good solution but it was my best solution until I can identify a way to completely remove it from all history.
2. It can also occur when the servers RAM / memory is low. (If you don't know how to increase your RAM then you probably shouldn't be using Git and should hire a professional developer to assist you.)

I'm not saying these are the only possibilities. But in my experience with at least a few hundred repositories it was one of these two things every time. Usually #1.

To see which files are the largest in your repository execute this command: ls -lS

Answer 3

Edit .git/config on Unix or .gitconfig on Windows and modifiy the following params. By running git config --list --show-origin you could locate your gitconfigs.

[core]
  packedGitLimit = 128m
  packedGitWindowSize = 128m

[pack]
  deltaCacheSize = 128m
  packSizeLimit = 128m
  windowMemory = 128m

[http]
  postbuffer = 5m

If you are using git via CLI ensure you restart your shell/terminal after you changed this settings.