Git error, need to remove large file

Question

I am getting this error when I try to push to git and I have no idea how to fix it.

Counting objects: 1239, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compre         


        

Answer 1

To remove large files, GitHub suggests:

$ git rm --cached giant_file
# Stage our giant file for removal, but leave it on disk

git commit --amend -CHEAD
# Amend the previous commit with your change
# Simply making a new commit won't work, as you need
# to remove the file from the unpushed history as well

git push
# Push our rewritten, smaller commit

Or if you want more general information on how to work with large files on GitHub.

And next time add /log in your .gitignore

Answer 2

To improve upon one of the reply above, you need

git filter-branch -f --tree-filter 'rm -f /path/to/file' HEAD --all

in order to remove your file even from the history. You need -f to force rewriting any backup and --all to remove file from all branches. More information here: Git docs

Your large file error won't go away by removing it from the git cache because it is still lurking in the commit history.