Removes large or troublesome blobs like git-filter-branch does, but faster. And written in Scala

Vipin Garg

1 year ago

You’re referring to BFG Repo-Cleaner — a tool written in Scala that’s used to quickly remove large or sensitive files (blobs) from Git history, similar to git filter-branch, but much faster and easier to use.

🔧 What BFG Does

BFG is ideal for:

Removing large files (e.g., .zip, .mp4, .iso)
Deleting sensitive data (e.g., passwords, tokens)
Cleaning up bloated Git repositories

🧰 BFG vs git-filter-branch

Feature	BFG Repo-Cleaner	git-filter-branch
Language	Scala (JVM required)	Shell + Git
Speed	⚡ Much faster	🐢 Very slow
Ease of use	Simple commands	Complex and verbose
Recommended by Git?	✅ Yes	⚠️ Deprecated by Git

✅ How to Use BFG (Quick Start)

1. Install BFG

Download the .jar from:
👉 https://rtyley.github.io/bfg-repo-cleaner/

Or via [Homebrew] (macOS):

brew install bfg

2. Clone Your Repo as a Bare Repo

git clone --mirror https://bitbucket.org/your/repo.git
cd repo.git

3. Remove Large Files

To delete all files over 100MB:

java -jar bfg.jar --strip-blobs-bigger-than 100M

To delete specific file types (e.g., .mp4, .zip):

java -jar bfg.jar --delete-files '*.mp4' '*.zip'

4. Clean and Push

git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git gc --prune=now --aggressive
git push --force

This rewrites history — notify collaborators beforehand!

Want to See Large Files First?

Use this to check which blobs are the largest:

git rev-list --objects --all | \
  git cat-file --batch-check='%(objecttype) %(objectname) %(objectsize) %(rest)' | \
  grep '^blob' | sort -k3 -n -r | head -n 20