I recently cloned a GIT repo that was over 1Gb in size. This was due to someone accidentally pushing the Nuget packages folder.
To make matters worse there were lots of branches all of which had these Nuget packackes. One option to remove the packages from all branches is as follows:-
git clone REPO_URL git filter-branch -f --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch packages" -- --all git push -all -f
A faster and better option is to use BFG Repo cleaner
If you don’t already have installed, follow the instructions on the above site or use brew as below:-
brew install bfg
Clone the repo as a mirror and use the BFG delete-folders command:-
git clone --mirror REPO_URL bfg --delete-folders packages REPO.git
Now free up the space and push
cd REPO.git git reflog expire --expire=now --all && git gc --prune=now --aggressive git push