What makes this commit still refer?

Question

There is a huge binary commit that I would like to cut off from my repo.

> git log --all -- '*.tiff' commit 05f03aba18164c736182e612181f99ce04e38845 ... 

This is not part of the branch ...

 > git branch --all --contains 05f03aba > (nothing) 

..., the tag is not indicated on it and reflog cannot refer to it. (I cleaned it up with git reflog expire --expire=now --all )

However, the commit is somehow referenced and therefore not truncated:

 > git fsck --unreachable > (nothing) 

How do I know what a commit refers to?

Answer 1

If your commit is reached using git log , you can simply run git log --source to show where your commit was reached from.

The backup copy of git filter-branch can refer to this - see this question for more details: Remove refs / original / heads / master from the git repository after filtering - is the -tree filter?