Large files on GitHub

Attempting to push a large file to github via `git push` may trigger an error similar to the following:

remote: error: Trace: a7fd45f56d86a2746c59141ab1ba4d49244652a35cf9b13527478e82b90a5ec3
remote: error: See http://git.io/iEPt8g for more information.
remote: error: File <your-file> is 217.39 MB; this exceeds GitHub's file size limit of 100.00 MB
remote: error: GH001: Large files detected. You may want to try Git Large File Storage - https://git-lfs.github.com.
To github.com:&lt;your-repo>
! [remote rejected] main -> main (pre-receive hook declined)
error: failed to push some refs to 'github.com:

Here's how to fix it, but beware, as of this writing:

1. Downloads count against your personal bandwidth limit, 1 GB/month
2. Without LFS, files are limited to 100GB, or 25GB through the browser
3. Large files count against repo size limit.
4. Other options: look at releases, or other external file server solutions

The fix:

Step 1. If you already commited the large file, you'll want to undo the commit:

git rm --cached <your-large>
git commit --amend -CHEAD --allow-empty

Step 2. If you're on ubuntu, here are the commands to retrieve git lfs:

sudo apt-get update -y
sudo apt-get install -y git-lfs

To install on other platforms, see: https://github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs/releases/tag/v3.2.0

Step 3. Install

git lfs install

Step 4. Track your large files

# for large model files, use:
git lfs track "*.h5"
# .gitattributes will have been modified, track that too:
git add .gitattributes

Step 5. Add your large file, e.g.

git add model.h5
git commit -c "added big model file"
git push origin main

Other Resources:

• https://git-lfs.github.com/