oracular (1) git-lfs-prune.1.gz

NAME

       git-lfs-prune - Delete old LFS files from local storage

SYNOPSIS

       git lfs prune [options]

DESCRIPTION

       Deletes local copies of LFS files which are old, thus freeing up disk space. Prune operates by
       enumerating all the locally stored objects, and then deleting any which are not referenced by at least
       ONE of the following:

       •   the current checkout

       •   all existing stashes

       •   a 'recent branch'; see RECENT FILES

       •   a 'recent commit' on the current branch or recent branches; see RECENT FILES

       •   a commit which has not been pushed; see UNPUSHED LFS FILES

       •   any other worktree checkouts; see git-worktree(1)

       In general terms, prune will delete files you’re not currently using and which are not 'recent', so long
       as they’ve been pushed i.e. the local copy is not the only one.

       The reflog is not considered, only commits. Therefore LFS objects that are only referenced by orphaned
       commits are always deleted.

       Note: you should not run git lfs prune if you have different repositories sharing the same custom storage
       directory; see git-lfs-config(5) for more details about lfs.storage option.

       In your Git configuration or in a .lfsconfig file, you may set lfs.fetchexclude to a comma-separated list
       of paths. If lfs.fetchexclude is defined, then any Git LFS files whose paths match one in that list will
       be pruned unless they are referenced by a stash or an unpushed commit. Paths are matched using wildcard
       matching as per gitignore(5).

OPTIONS

       --dry-run, -d
           Don’t actually delete anything, just report on what would have been done

       --force, -f
           Prune all objects except unpushed objects, including objects required for currently checked out refs.
           Implies --recent.

       --recent
           Prune even objects that would normally be preserved by the configuration options specified below in
           RECENT FILES.

       --verify-remote, -c
           Contact the remote and check that copies of reachable files we would delete definitely exist before
           deleting. See VERIFY REMOTE.

       --no-verify-remote
           Disables remote verification if lfs.pruneverifyremotealways was enabled in settings. See VERIFY
           REMOTE.

       --verify-reachable
           When doing --verify-remote contact the remote and check unreachable objects as well. See VERIFY
           REMOTE.

       --no-verify-reachable
           Disables remote verification of unreachable files if lfs.pruneverifyunreachablealways was enabled in
           settings. See VERIFY REMOTE.

       --when-unverified=<halt,continue>
           When --verify-remote cannot verify an object on the remote, either halt the execution or continue the
           deletion of verified objects. See VERIFY REMOTE.

       --verbose, -v
           Report the full detail of what is/would be deleted.

RECENT FILES

       Prune won’t delete LFS files referenced by 'recent' commits, in case you want to use them again without
       having to download. The definition of 'recent' is derived from the one used by git-lfs-fetch(1) to
       download recent objects with the --recent option, with an offset of a number of days (default 3) to
       ensure that we always keep files you download for a few days.

       Here are the git-config(1) settings that control this behaviour:

       •   lfs.pruneoffsetdays The number of extra days added to the fetch recent settings when using them to
           decide when to prune. So for a reference to be considered old enough to prune, it has to be this many
           days older than the oldest reference that would be downloaded via git lfs fetch --recent. Only used
           if the relevant fetch recent 'days' setting is non-zero. Default 3 days.

       •   lfs.fetchrecentrefsdays lfs.fetchrecentremoterefs lfs.fetchrecentcommitsdays These have the same
           meaning as git-lfs-fetch(1) with the --recent option, they are used as a base for the offset above.
           Anything which falls outside of this offsetted window is considered old enough to prune. If a day
           value is zero, that condition is not used at all to retain objects and they will be pruned.

UNPUSHED LFS FILES

       When the only copy of an LFS file is local, and it is still reachable from any reference, that file can
       never be pruned, regardless of how old it is.

       To determine whether an LFS file has been pushed, we check the difference between local refs and remote
       refs; where the local ref is ahead, any LFS files referenced in those commits is unpushed and will not be
       deleted. This works because the LFS pre-push hook always ensures that LFS files are pushed before the
       remote branch is updated.

       See DEFAULT REMOTE, for which remote is considered 'pushed' for pruning purposes.

VERIFY REMOTE

       The --verify-remote option calls the remote to ensure that any reachable LFS files to be deleted have
       copies on the remote before actually deleting them.

       Usually the check performed by UNPUSHED LFS FILES is enough to determine that files have been pushed, but
       if you want to be extra sure at the expense of extra overhead you can make prune actually call the remote
       API and verify the presence of the files you’re about to delete locally. See DEFAULT REMOTE for which
       remote is checked.

       You can make this behaviour the default by setting lfs.pruneverifyremotealways to true.

       In addition to the overhead of calling the remote, using this option also requires prune to distinguish
       between totally unreachable files (e.g. those that were added to the index but never committed, or
       referenced only by orphaned commits), and files which are still referenced, but by commits which are
       prunable. This makes the prune process take longer.

       If you want to verify unreachable objects as well, set the --verify-unreachable option.

       You can check for unreachable objects by default by setting lfs.pruneverifyunreachablealways to true.

       By default, --verify-remote halts execution if a file cannot be verified. Set --when-unverified=continue
       to not halt exceution but continue deleting all objects that can be verified.

DEFAULT REMOTE

       When identifying UNPUSHED LFS FILES and performing VERIFY REMOTE, a single remote, 'origin', is normally
       used as the reference. This one remote is considered canonical; even if you use multiple remotes, you
       probably want to retain your local copies until they’ve made it to that remote. 'origin' is used by
       default because that will usually be a main central repo, or your fork of it - in both cases that’s a
       valid remote backup of your work. If origin doesn’t exist then by default nothing will be pruned because
       everything is treated as 'unpushed'.

       You can alter the remote via git config: lfs.pruneremotetocheck. Set this to a different remote name to
       check that one instead of 'origin'.

SEE ALSO

       git-lfs-fetch(1), gitignore(5).

       Part of the git-lfs(1) suite.

                                                   2024-03-07                                   GIT-LFS-PRUNE(1)