What causes a large binary accidentally committed to Git without LFS?

A big binary was committed directly to Git history before LFS was set up, so it lives in every clone's history permanently and inflates repository size even after deletion.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Large Binary Accidentally Committed to Git Without LFS

Quick answer: Use git lfs migrate import to rewrite history and move the offending files into LFS, then force-push and have collaborators re-clone so the bloat is removed from the pack files.

Your repo clone is huge because a multi-hundred-megabyte texture or video was committed normally. Deleting it now does not help because it stays in history.

How to fix it

1. Migrate history into LFS

Run git lfs migrate import --include="*.psd,*.mp4" --everything to rewrite past commits so those files are stored as LFS objects, shrinking the Git history.

2. Coordinate the force-push

History rewriting changes every affected commit hash, so coordinate with the team, force-push the rewritten branches, and have everyone re-clone or hard-reset to the new history.

3. Track going forward

Add the extensions to .gitattributes with the LFS filter and commit it before adding more large files, so future binaries never enter regular Git history.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.