Migration problems from SVN

Hi all,

I'm trying to migrate from svn to git, but has run into a snag for which I haven't found any good solutions on the web:

If I early on and accidentally commit a *large* binary object, how do I get rid of it from .git again?

svn copes with this reasonably well as the binary object will no longer be downloaded if it is deleted. Also when converting old SVN repositories, such objects needs to be pruned. Somewhat related I also need to enumerate the offending large binary objects that I should get rid of.

It is unpractical to live by the rule that no big objects should ever be committed accidentally given the number of people involved and the walks of life they come from.... So there really needs to be some way to deal with this once the damage has been done.

Øyvind Harboe wrote:

git-filter-branch can do that.  See the top of the EXAMPLES section in

  http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-filter-branch.html

This requires a rewrite of all history affected; make sure you understand the implications if you have already published it. See the DISCUSSION in the same manpage.

Also note that due to the distributed nature, you cannot force such changed history upon anyone; i.e., you cannot remove the objects from anyone else's repository. You can only ask them to accept your new history and forget that the old one was ever there.

On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 1:39 PM, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:

Ah! Thanks! I will study this. Thanks for your patience with a beginner, I guess I should have spotted this one. There is a lot to read and git is refreshingly different and there is a lot of things to catch up on.