Git - compress .git directory

In this short article, we want to show how to remove unnecessary files and compress required files in a better way in the .git directory.

Quick solution (run the following command in your project directory):

xxxxxxxxxx

git gc --prune=now

Example output:

xxxxxxxxxx

Enumerating objects: 1210, done.

Counting objects: 100% (1210/1210), done.

Delta compression using up to 24 threads

Compressing objects: 100% (1054/1054), done.

Writing objects: 100% (1210/1210), done.

Total 1210 (delta 253), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 0

Note: the above operation reduced .git directory size for the presented output from 2.61GB to 0.98GB.

From Git Documentation:

--prune=<date>

Prune loose objects older than date (default is 2 weeks ago, overridable by the config variable gc.pruneExpire). --prune=now prunes loose objects regardless of their age and increases the risk of corruption if another process is writing to the repository concurrently; see "NOTES" below. --prune is on by default.

1. git-gc (--prune=<date>) - Git Documentation