At times .git folder becomes much larger than the code base, and needs shrinking

identify_large_files.sh

#!/bin/bash
#set -x 

# Shows you the largest objects in your repo's pack file.
# Written for osx.
#
# @see http://stubbisms.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/git-script-to-show-largest-pack-objects-and-trim-your-waist-line/
# @author Antony Stubbs

# set the internal field spereator to line break, so that we can iterate easily over the verify-pack output
IFS=$'\n';

# list all objects including their size, sort by size, take top 10
objects=`git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/pack-*.idx | grep -v chain | sort -k3nr | head`

echo "All sizes are in kB. The pack column is the size of the object, compressed, inside the pack file."

output="size,pack,SHA,location"
for y in $objects
do
	# extract the size in bytes
	size=$((`echo $y | cut -f 5 -d ' '`/1024))
	# extract the compressed size in bytes
	compressedSize=$((`echo $y | cut -f 6 -d ' '`/1024))
	# extract the SHA
	sha=`echo $y | cut -f 1 -d ' '`
	# find the objects location in the repository tree
	other=`git rev-list --all --objects | grep $sha`
	#lineBreak=`echo -e "\n"`
	output="${output}\n${size},${compressedSize},${other}"
done

echo -e $output | column -t -s ', '

shrink_git.sh

# an example showing current status:
git count-objects -v

# git's garbage collection
git gc --aggressive --prune

# ------------- notes ------------------------
# an example run, codebase: 0.6MB, .git: 30MB.
# after gc, it trimmed down to 25mb
# some good sources:
# this blog post: http://stevelorek.com/how-to-shrink-a-git-repository.html
# and this discussion here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5613345/how-to-shrink-the-git-folder