Why is my GitLab storage significantly bigger then my files?

Question

The total storage in gitlab is stacking with my files whenever i push/commit. All the files (Including Hidden Folders) add up to around 20mb. Whenever i commit/push 20 mb are added to the total storage. This started happening recently and I haven't changed anything. Is there anything I could do to lower my storage usage and prevent this from happening again?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

git repositories are not just made up of the files being tracked by git, but all of the history, branches, tags, etc..

All of the commits, all files added in the past and deleted later are all stored in the history. GitLab is telling you your actual files currently in your default branch take up 20.2MB, but the total size of the repository is 549.1MB.

For more information, check out Chapter 10 of Pro Git, Git Internals .