Another way that LFS is bad, as I recently discovered, is that the migration will pollute the `.gitattributes` of ancestor commits that do not contain the LFS objects.

In other words, if you migrate a repo that has commits A->B->C, and C adds the large files, then commits A & B will gain a `.gitattributes` referring to the large files that do not exist in A & B.

This is because the migration function will carry its ~gitattributes structure backwards as it walks the history, for caching purposes, and not cross-reference it against the current commit.

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actinium226 5 days ago | parent [-]

That doesn't sound right. There's no way it's adding a file to previous commits, that would change the hash and thereby break a lot of things.

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AceJohnny2 5 days ago | parent [-]

`git lfs migrate ` rewrites the commits to convert large files in the repo to/from LFS pointers, so yes it does change the hashes. That's a well-documented effect.

https://github.com/git-lfs/git-lfs/blob/main/docs/man/git-lf...

Now, granted, usually people run migrate to only convert new local commits, so by nature of the ref include/exclude system it will not touch older commits. But in my case I was converting an entire repo into one using LFS. I hoped it would preserve those commits in a base branch that didn't contain large files, but my disappointment was said .gitattributes pollution.

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actinium226 5 days ago | parent [-]

From the documentation, like 2 paragraphs in:

> In all modes, by default git lfs migrate operates only on the currently checked-out branch, and only on files (of any size and type) added in commits which do not exist on any remote. Multiple options are available to override these defaults.

Were your remotes not configured correctly?

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AceJohnny2 5 days ago | parent [-]

Let me repeat myself:

> But in my case I was converting an entire repo into one using LFS.

then check out the section in the manual "INCLUDE AND EXCLUDE REFERENCES"

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actinium226 4 days ago | parent [-]

OK, and your main complaint was that it added .gitattributes to all previous commits? What if someone were to go back and add a .bin to the earlier commits, you would still want it in LFS, right? I'm not sure what "cross referencing to the current commit" would mean in that case. I don't see why you would want to use the .gitattributes from a different branch, like main or something. It seems very un-git-like for an operation to reference another branch without being explicitly told to do so.

But anyway, yes, LFS rewrites history if you want to apply it to history. I agree it's sub-par; it's disruptive and risks breaking links to specific githashes.

	▲	rcxdude 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The issue is the migration is unlike starting to use it on a repo, because the metadata propagates 'backwards in time' instead of reflecting what is actually in the repo at that commit.