Fixing a Broken GitHub Repo

Posted on from Toledo, IA

Don’t Push Enormous Files to GitHub!

Pay close attention to the subtitle above! A couple of days ago I was working on content for Tama-Toledo Community Visioning and I added a large socialmedia.zip file to the source repo, and then very stupidly pushed it to GitHub and the repo’s main branch. Naturally, the push didn’t finish so I removed the file and pushed a new commit to “remove it permanently”. Well, that ain’t how git works!

The “remove” commit appeared to have worked, but now the TTCV site wouldn’t deploy since the build time had gone from less than 2 minutes, to more than 10 minutes. I immediately became suspicious of that pesky, large, socialmedia.zip file, but how could I properly get rid of it?

Using git filter-repo

Fortunately, I found and followed the GitHub docs guidance in Using git filter-repo to remove the troublesome large file, namely socialmedia.zip, from the repo. My commands, and somewhat abridged output, to do this looked something like this…

╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main*› ╰─$ git status On branch main Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

Untracked files:
(use “git add …” to include in what will be committed)
static/images/Business-30-Broadway-Crosswalk-Sign.png

nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use “git add” to track)
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main*›
╰─$ code .
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main*›
╰─$ brew install git-filter-repo
Running brew update --auto-update…
==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
==> Updated Homebrew from 3.6.19 (260ee0ee6) to 3.6.20 (344d32bf7).
Updated 3 taps (homebrew/core, homebrew/cask and dart-lang/dart).
==> New Formulae
dstack
==> New Casks
codux

The 3.6.20 changelog can be found at:
https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/releases/tag/3.6.20
==> Fetching git-filter-repo
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/git-filter-repo/manifests/2.38.0-1 ######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Downloading https://ghcr.io/v2/homebrew/core/git-filter-repo/blobs/sha256:a309651d195fca608c9268b7075f58e018e83fc285e4f43d85546adea28e1d83
==> Downloading from https://pkg-containers.githubusercontent.com/ghcr1/blobs/sha256:a309651d195fca608c9268b7075f58e018e83fc285e4f43d85546adea28e1d83?se=2023-01 ######################################################################## 100.0%
==> Pouring git-filter-repo–2.38.0.all.bottle.1.tar.gz
🍺 /usr/local/Cellar/git-filter-repo/2.38.0: 8 files, 281.4KB
==> Running brew cleanup git-filter-repo…
Disable this behaviour by setting HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP.
Hide these hints with HOMEBREW_NO_ENV_HINTS (see man brew).
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main›
╰─$ git pull
remote: Enumerating objects: 7, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (7/7), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
remote: Total 4 (delta 2), reused 4 (delta 2), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (4/4), 78.90 KiB | 1022.00 KiB/s, done.
From https://github.com/Tama-Toledo/community-visioning
978a2cd..23b4276 gh-pages -> origin/gh-pages
Already up to date.
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main›
╰─$ code .
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/cv ‹main›
╰─$ cd ..
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub
╰─$ mv -f cv .out-of-the-way
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub
╰─$ git clone https://github.com/Tama-Toledo/community-visioning
Cloning into ‘community-visioning’…
remote: Enumerating objects: 3738, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (882/882), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (307/307), done.
remote: Total 3738 (delta 488), reused 776 (delta 388), pack-reused 2856
Receiving objects: 100% (3738/3738), 119.72 MiB | 29.18 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1932/1932), done.
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub
╰─$ cd community-visioning
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ ll
total 16
-rw-r–r– 1 mark staff 36B Jan 19 16:24 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 4 mark staff 128B Jan 19 16:24 archetypes
drwxr-xr-x 3 mark staff 96B Jan 19 16:24 assets
-rw-r–r– 1 mark staff 3.5K Jan 19 16:24 config.toml
drwxr-xr-x 9 mark staff 288B Jan 19 16:24 content
drwxr-xr-x 3 mark staff 96B Jan 19 16:24 i18n
drwxr-xr-x 8 mark staff 256B Jan 19 16:24 layouts
drwxr-xr-x 3 mark staff 96B Jan 19 16:24 resources
drwxr-xr-x 6 mark staff 192B Jan 19 16:24 static
drwxr-xr-x 3 mark staff 96B Jan 19 16:24 themes
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ code .
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git filter-repo –invert-paths –path socialmedia.zip
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git remote add origin https://github.com/Tama-Toledo/community-visioning
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git push origin –force –all
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git status
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with ‘origin/main’.

nothing to commit, working tree clean
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git pull
╭─mark@Marks-Mac-Mini ~/GitHub/community-visioning ‹main›
╰─$ git branch –set-upstream-to=origin/main main

The key commands in that sequence are…

It Worked!

The good news, this worked, and I now have my repo back in shape such that I can successfully deploy it again.

That’s a wrap. Oh, in case you want to know what happened to socialmedia.zip, check out that project’s README.md file.