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Rewritten the Git history locally to reduce its size assist with repository garbage collection

Tom Jones
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July 15, 2026

The repository is over its storage limit.

I have rewritten the Git history locally to reduce its size, but the cleanup force-push is being rejected by the pre-receive hook.

Please temporarily permit the cleanup push or assist with repository garbage collection.

Thankyou.

2 answers

1 vote
Ben
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
July 19, 2026

Hi @Tom Jones 

Apologies for the delay.

I have attempted to reduce the size of your largest repositories by executing a garbage collection, but it has not reduced the size much (100mb), and your workspace is still > 1GB.

  • 665mb > 656mb

  • 409.6mb > 409.4mb

You have a couple of options to resolve this:

Option 1 - Delete & recreate the repositories
This is the fastest way to solve the problem, but loses metadata such as PRs, Pipelines, Permissions, etc.

  1. Perform a clone of those repositories for backup purposes

  2. Delete those repositories from your workspace to free up space and allow you to push. 
    NOTE: This will permanently remove metadata such as PR's/pipelines/user permissions etc.

  3. Identify the largest files in your repositories by executing the following command:
    git rev-list --objects --all \
    | git cat-file --batch-check='%(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize) %(rest)' \| awk '/^blob/ {print substr($0,6)}' \
    | sort -r --numeric-sort --key=2 \
    | numfmt --field=2 --to=iec-i --suffix=B --padding=7 --round=nearest

  4. Perform cleanup operations locally to reduce the size

  5. Once complete, push those repositories back to your workspace by creating a blank repository with the same name of the deleted repository, then mirror pushing the contents of the cleaned repository:

 

HTTPS
git push --mirror https://<username>@bitbucket.org/<WorkspaceID>/<RepoName>.git
SSH
git push --mirror git@bitbucket.org:<WorkspaceID>/<RepoName>.git

NOTE: This will remove metadata such as PR's/pipelines/permissions etc but will keep your commit history and binary files intact.

Option 2 - Temporarily upgrade

  1. Upgrade to a paid plan and utilise our trial period to restore functionality and provide more time to reduce your repository directly without deletion. You can choose to continue or cease your trial before the end of the trial period.

  2. If you encounter any issues during this period - you may raise a ticket directly with our support team using your workspace URL: Atlassian Support  

Please let me know how this goes.

Cheers!

- Ben (Bitbucket Cloud Support)

0 votes
Tomislav Tobijas
Community Champion
July 16, 2026

Hi @Tom Jones ,

I've pinged the forum support team to take a look at this and to try to run the cleanup.

Someone should get back to you on this within 1-2 business days.

Cheers,
Tobi

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