title: Git repo still huge after large files removed from repository history
body: <p>I have a codebase that (until now) used git to store its dependencies. The repository itself <a href="https://github.com/scalagwt/scalagwt-sample" rel="nofollow noreferrer">is available here</a> (warning: it's HUGE). Needless to say, I need to remove the dependencies from the repository history in order to cut it down to a reasonable size.</p>
  
  <p>I started by using <a href="http://dound.com/2009/04/git-forever-remove-files-or-folders-from-history/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">David Underhill's instructions</a> to remove the <code>lib</code> directory from the history. Even after doing this, however, the repository is still over 300M. Issuing <code>git prune</code> and <code>git repack</code> helps, but it's still over 180M.</p>
  
  <p>In an attempt to find any bloated blobs, I issued</p>
  
  <pre><code>git verify-pack -v .git/objects/pack/pack-*.idx | grep -v chain | sort -k3nr | head
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>with these results:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>105526b5d3d398b9989d88c2f9fc2d1dc96a85b8 blob   35685609 33600527 31978828
    d296935e6ac5f3f58b50c789394c9769116e9c34 blob   35658016 33593241 112485744
    50636f931180a32764edadd854968a971a083f8a blob   28360290 25897864 233390
    b9e4dd37428e879a258f297b7f5bcfb9ba869695 blob   13108002 11640713 66661788
    08d2720b2414aa07ce419b17d5f80c333c7313b7 blob   12551621 11124009 89231035
    6197a478a461275a0396f20c28487e9ae619a5f9 blob   11975135 11058259 148211988 1 50636f931180a32764edadd854968a971a083f8a
    549eb0c73776fd0ede27a2fcb03366f76f45a13c blob   9136086 8166649 166451273
    5bc0a0f04a7004bc16cfab1c091c6b369fb74049 blob   9072616 8270262 80951514
    741480238a6a6ce612cf089245dd46d6890fba9f blob   8858569 8080252 101294029
    744226651c55b14c1aa8affb78fba4fdf02b577c blob   7412220 6766404 186825167</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>This is where I'm stuck.  I can <code>git show</code> these blobs and see that they look very much like jar files, but I can't figure out why they're still in the repo.</p>
  
  <p>Various attempts to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/460331/git-finding-a-filename-from-a-sha1">find their filenames</a> failed. </p>
  
  <p><code>git repack -a</code>, <code>git repack -ad</code>, and <code>git repack -Ad</code> all seem to have no effect.</p>