Errors when attempting to switch branches & when pushing Github

[Cole]

Hey all! 

Alright so super noob here I was attempting to use Sourctree (and github) as a means of source control for my project in Unreal Engine 5. The first couple commits & pushes were fine as I had no large files. 

Eventually once I had some larger files I got the initial stage error/warning saying I had large files, I ignored this as I did want those files to be included - many of them are vital to the overall functioning of the project. However, when I would actually try and push (after staging and committing) I'd get post buffer errors and would ignore the issue (leaving it as a commit pretty much). 

Fast forward to tonight I have three branches: Main, Combat, ALS. Combat is where my previous three commits are and ALS was a new branch I made as I was about to start working on a new system that may or not break a lot of things. I tried pushing per usual and once again got a post buffer error, however this time it recommended I try git LFS, great! 

Downloaded git LFS and seemingly set it up (as I'm new to git I can never really tell), and then double-clicked on my combat branch... wait did I just swap branches? 

Booted up my project and yeah, I went back to a commit when I swapped branches, from what I can tell at least, from many days ago. Now when I attempt to swap back over to the ALS branch where I actually need to do the work, and where all my progress up to now is stored, I get the following error (see image). 

I've tried looking up solutions already but they all seem risky for a noob like me and I'd rather not lose days of work because of a stupid mistake. 

So a couple things I'm looking for: 
1. How do I fix the error in the image? 
2. In the future what can I do to prevent postbuffer/LFS errors? I tried pushing once I had LFS installed but it didn't really seem to do me any good. Do I need to manually choose which files are sent to LFS vs git ?

Sorry for the ramble and thanks for your help!

[Martin Runge]

Hi @Cole - Nova - Andrews

I know this thread is old, so this may only help others landing here.

Nothing is lost. Git blocks the checkout because those .ini files are untracked in your working copy, whereas ALS has committed versions of them.

Those files under Saved/Config/WindowsEditor are regenerated by Unreal, so they are safe to move. Close Unreal, move the Saved folder aside, then switch to ALS. Your work will be there.

Then add Saved/, Intermediate/, Binaries/, and DerivedDataCache/ to .gitignore so it stops being repeated. Unreal ships a template .gitignore that covers this.

On LFS, installing it does not fix past commits. You track patterns like .uasset first, then run git lfs migrate to rewrite existing history. Raising http.postBuffer only hides the real limit, which is GitHub's 100 MB per file.

Did you get the branch back?

Cheers, Martin