How to remove unused objects from a git repository?

I answered this elsewhere, and will copy here since I’m proud of it!

… and without further ado, may I present to you this useful script, git-gc-all, guaranteed to remove all your git garbage until they might come up with extra config variables:

git -c gc.reflogExpire=0 -c gc.reflogExpireUnreachable=0
-c gc.rerereresolved=0 -c gc.rerereunresolved=0
-c gc.pruneExpire=now gc “$@”

The --aggressive option might be helpful.

NOTE: this will remove ALL unreferenced thingies, so don’t come crying to me if you decide later that you wanted to keep some of them!

You might also need to run something like these first, oh dear, git is complicated!!

git remote rm origin
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ .git/refs/remotes/ .git/*_HEAD .git/logs/
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ |
xargs -n1 --no-run-if-empty git update-ref -d

I put all this in a script, here:

http://sam.nipl.net/b/git-gc-all-ferocious
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3797907/how-to-remove-unused-objects-from-a-git-repository