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We are trying to clean up the history of a git repository hosted on VSO/team services. Using bfg and git-filter-branch we removed about ~80% of stored objects by cleaning accidentally checken in packages folders etc.

After successfully rewriting the repository’s git history we force pushed to visualstudio.com but new clones of that repo seem to suggest that none of the objects were actually removed. We found hints here and there indicating that TFS does not perform any garbage collection on git objects.

Is that (still) true for VSO as well?

Any improvements planned?

Deleting and recreating the repository would probably be a workaround but doesn’t seem that elegant.

Simon Opelt
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1 Answers1

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Yes, it’s still true for VSTS (VSO) now. But git gc on the server is in our backlog, so it will be improved in the future.

The option for now is recreating a new repo and push again (as you mentioned).

Marina Liu
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  • Thank you for the swift answer. Is there any place where improvements on that front would be published/announced? Will that show up on https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/articles/news/features-timeline ? – Simon Opelt May 29 '17 at 09:08
  • Yes, as the link you list, you can find the near future features which are under developing. For the long time schedules and other backlogs we don't list here since they need to reorder or make changes sometimes. – Marina Liu May 29 '17 at 09:16
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    @MarinaLiu-MSFT Is this still not implemented? Cannot find it in the link. – kuga Jan 24 '19 at 15:18
  • Any news? Simons link is now broken: This should be a new working version (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/release-notes/features-timeline) but still without this feature :( – kuga Jul 07 '21 at 16:19
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    I've discovered a [developer community feature request](https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/Support-git-garbage-collection/840092) which references this post and has several upvotes. Unfortunately no word from Microsoft on the status there yet (unless it's in the private Microsoft comment), nor that I could find on the features timeline. – snydergd Sep 23 '21 at 19:51