Git Large File Storage

Git LFS is a command line extension and specification for managing large files with Git. The client is written in Go, with pre-compiled binaries available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. Check out the Git LFS website for an overview of features.

Getting Started

You can install Git LFS in several different ways, depending on your setup and preferences.

• Linux users can install Debian or RPM packages from PackageCloud.
• Mac users can install from Homebrew with brew install git-lfs.
• Windows users can install from Chocolatey with choco install git-lfs.install.
• Binary packages are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD.
• You can build it with Go 1.5+. See the Contributing Guide for instructions.

Note: Git LFS requires Git v1.8.2 or higher.

One installed, you need to setup the global Git hooks for Git LFS. This only needs to be run once per machine.

$ git lfs install

Now, it's time to add some large files to a repository. The first step is to specify file patterns to store with Git LFS. These file patterns are stored in .gitattributes.

$ mkdir large-repo
$ cd large-repo
$ git init

# Add all zip files through Git LFS
$ git lfs track "*.zip"

Now you're ready to push some commits:

$ git add my.zip
$ git commit -m "add zip"

You can confirm that Git LFS is managing your zip file:

$ git lfs ls-files
my.zip

Once you've made your commits, push your files to the Git remote:

$ git push origin master
Sending my.zip
LFS: 12.58 MB / 12.58 MB  100.00 %
Counting objects: 2, done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done.
Writing objects: 100% (5/5), 548 bytes | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 5 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/github/git-lfs-test
   67fcf6a..47b2002  master -> master

Need Help?

You can get help on specific commands directly:

$ git lfs help <subcommand>

The official documentation has command references and specifications for the tool. You can ask questions in the Git LFS chat room, or file a new issue. Be sure to include details about the problem so we can troubleshoot it.

1. Include the output of git lfs env, which shows how your Git environment is setup.
2. Include GIT_TRACE=1 in any bad Git commands to enable debug messages.
3. If the output includes a message like Errors logged to /path/to/.git/lfs/objects/logs/*.log, throw the contents in the issue, or as a link to a Gist or paste site.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for info on working on Git LFS and sending patches. Related projects are listed on the Implementations wiki page. You can also join the project's chat room.