How to remove a large file from git

Question

A few commits ago, I added a large image to a git repo. A few commits later I delete the image and used git add -A.

Is there a way to make git think as if that large file never existed?

Answer 1

You have to rewrite history from the commit where you added the big file. There are countless possibilities, including git filter-branch or git rebase or even git cherry-pick with some manual branch manipulation.

Some related answers:

• How to remove/delete a large file from commit history in Git repository? with rebase or filter-branch. This answer is rather a wiki :-)
• pushing to gihub error using Rails for a simple filter-branch solution