By default, git will compress and store all subsqeuent full versions of binary assets. This can cause poor performance of git if you’re regularly updating pictures or 3D model files.

Git Large File Storage (LFS) is an open source solution to this issue.

According to the project website;

Git Large File Storage (LFS) replaces large files such as audio samples, videos, datasets, and graphics with text pointers inside Git, while storing the file contents on a remote server like GitHub.com or GitHub Enterprise.

How do I use it?

Git LFS extends Git’s functionality by adding the lfs command.

Some of the subcommands included with git lfs:

• init: Initialise git-lfs
• logs: View git-lfs erros logs
• track: Add a file to git-lfs
• untrack: Remove a file from git-lfs
• push: Push tracked files to the git-lfs server
• status: List modified git-lfs objects.

An example workflow:

git lfs track "*.psd"
git add file.psd
git commit -m "Add large file"
git push origin master

This will push the large file using the Git LFS API.

This means that the git server will need to support Git LFS.

As of now (2015-07-05) you can only use Git LFS with your Github account if you request access. I’m currently waiting for my invite!