GitHub Pages with Git LFS

Recently, I decided to take another look at Git LFS. I was blown away by the simplicity of the extension to the already awesome Git VCS but also the ease of use of GitHub’s implementation of the feature.

Git LFS allows you to store large like binary files, assets and other files that you don’t want to clog up a Git repo and store them on a storage network like the one provided by GitHub. You can get a bit more of an understanding on what Git LFS is here. It’s really easy to install and setup - just follow the instructions on the site.

Previously, I’ve blogged about my site telling you all about how wonderful Jekyll is on GitHub Pages. When I found out how great Git LFS is, I naturally wanted to know if I could use Git LFS to store assets for my sites, such as Photoshop assets, large images, PDFs, etc. Through trial and error, I found that GitHub Pages does not allow you to serve assets from Git LFS in your GitHub Pages site, which is a little disappointing.

I turned to Uncle Google to make sure that there wasn’t a workaround for this that I hadn’t thought of, but all I found was this. So it seems (from a GitHub employee) that Git LFS is not supported by GitHub Pages, outright. Sad, because it would be great!

GitHub are a great company and in the past when I’ve had questions or queries, they’ve been most helpful. I decided to ask them why they don’t support this feature, merely to satisfy my own curiosity. Jess Hosman at GitHub kindly replied to my email (really quickly! ):

Hi Joe,

Thanks for getting in touch! LFS with GitHub Pages is something we’d love to support in the future, but still have some work to do to get us there. I’ll definitely pass this along to the team, and let them know you’d find that feature useful.

Thanks so much for the feedback, and let us know if you notice anything else that could be improved.

Cheers,

Jess

So, at least there’s hope that this feature will be supported by GitHub in the future - It wasn’t just a point blank “No!” that we come to expect from large companies like Apple and Google nowadays.

This post is a little different from my recent posts as it’s less of a tutorial/how-to format and instead a more “FYI” style post. Hopefully Google will index it and help others get to the conclusion I did, without having to waste too much time. Furthermore, hopefully GitHub will implement this feature sooner rather than later!