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Last active October 23, 2024 05:31
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Removing git lfs from (any) repository

So, it has been an interesting journey, but time to remove git-lfs. Here follows a summary of the approach I used to safely remove git-lfs,

  • commit & push everything
  • create a branch, something like fix/remove-lfs
  • remove hooks git lfs uninstall
  • remove lfs stuff from .gitattributes (open file, delete content - don't delete the file!)
  • list all lfs files, git lfs ls-files
  • run git rm --cached for each file
    • if your list is big, copy the contents into a file.txt
    • make sure you remove the number and asterik on each line, you only want the paths to the files
    • while read line; do git rm --cached "$line"; done < files.txt
  • run git add for each file
    • if you have a file.txt
    • while read line; do git add "$line"; done < files.txt
  • run a git status and make sure all the files were added properly
  • commit everything
git add .gitattributes
git commit -m "unlfs"
git push
  • check that no lfs files left with git lfs ls-files
  • remove any lfs, rm -rf .git/lfs

Once your branch (fix/remove-lfs) is merged into develop, your team doesn't need to do anything other than simply pulling and checking out the new state of the world, their repository will work as-expected without git lfs installed. If git lfs is still installed, simply let them uninstall it: git lfs uninstall

Credits: Fedor, Taylor, Chase, Simon

@LecDoit
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LecDoit commented Jul 23, 2024

i am not able to uninstall LFS this is crap

@Nosenzor
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Nosenzor commented Oct 9, 2024

i am not able to uninstall LFS this is crap

Same

@angadsinghsandhu
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same lol

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