How do I delete a single file committed last year?

Ian Nisbet

A large binary (2Gb) file was accidentally committed, then some months later it was deleted. I therefore have two commits that mention this huge file, which makes the whole .git directory huge. I want to delete just this file from the first commit, then also from the later commit, so that the whole git repository becomes a lot smaller.

jyo

Ian,

I think your best option here would be to use BFG Cleaner:

https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

This way you can run this script and delete just file and not have to do a git reset operation which would roll you back far into history.

Cheers,

Jesse