File too large checked in

FILE TOO LARGE CHECKED IN and HOW TO FIX IT

When I do git push I see this error:

Exceeds file size limit 2200000. 

WHY BIG FILES ARE NOT ALLOWED

The kent repo has a limit (currently 2.2 MB) on file sizes being checked in. The restriction has been implemented as a hook in the central shared repo that developers push to. We already did not want large files to be checked-in, and during the transition from CVS to git, many huge test files were removed. Also, github has size restrictions which have to be honored. And people will find kent repo excessively bloated and hard to use without this size restriction. This is a repository of source code text, which is small.

WHY PEOPLE CHECK IN BIG FILES

Because developers are encouraged to make standard tests subdirectory for their kent utilities, there are testing files which get checked in, and unless care is exercised, it is very easy for programmers who deal with giant genomics files to accidentally check them in. Also, sometimes people want to check in PDF documents and some reasonably sized JPG or PNG images. Please use JPG when it is a camera image for better compression and smaller size. PNG is lossless compression, which is bigger, and good for diagrams non-photographic things with a small number of colors. And sometimes, people just make a mistake, or forget about the limit.

WHY DO I FIND OUT ABOUT IT SO LATE?

It was critical that the central repository protect itself against pushes with large files, and we do that with a hook put in manually on our main site. Although git offers some ways to copy hooks