Tutorial: Removing Large Files from Git

How to overcome the “error: GH001: Large files detected” error message when you’re pushing changes to GitHub

Image credit: https://www.wocintechchat.com/blog/wocintechphotos

This tutorial uses the commit hashes from this GitHub repository, although all necessary information is contained in this blog post. If you do not have a Medium membership, click here for a no-paywall link to this blog post.

The Error Message

So, you just tried to run git push, and after taking longer than usual, you get an error trace like this one:

remote: error: GH001: Large files detected. You may want to try Git Large File Storage - https://git-lfs.github.com
remote: error: Trace: 08740bd2fb02f980041be67b73e715a9
remote: error: See http://git.io/iEPt8g for more information.
remote: error: File csv_building_damage_assessment.csv is 218.83 MB; this exceeds GitHub's file size limit of 100.00 MB
To https://github.com/hoffm386/git-large-file-example.git
! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'https://github.com/hoffm386/git-large-file-example.git'

What Happened?