Large File System (LFS)

Git LFS is an addon to Git which provides clean handling of arbitrarily large files, (in theory) giving you the best of both Git-style DVCS and being able to track large blobs of files.

This can become necessary as Git sometimes struggles to track large files and can become unusably slow.

Migrating a repo to use LFS

tl;dr:

$ git lfs migrate import --include="*.jpg" --everything
$ git lfs ls-files --all
$ git push --all --force

History rewrite

This import rewrites history (due to the --everything flag). See the warnings at the top of Editing History.

See also

• https://josh-ops.com/posts/migrate-to-git-lfs/
• “No kill like overkill” method: https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

Configuring a repo for ongoing LFS usage

• git lfs track "*.jpg": select filetypes for LFS to manage
  • Make sure .gitattributes is tracked (git add .gitattributes)
  • From here, just add/commit/push files as normal

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