file - How to remove unused objects from a git repository?

Question

I accidentally added, committed and pushed a huge binary file with my very latest commit to a Git repository.

How can I make Git remove the object(s) that was/were created for that commit so my .git directory shrinks to a sane size again?

Edit: Thanks for your answers; I tried several solutions. None worked. For example the one from GitHub removed the files from the history, but the .git directory size hasn't decreased:

$ BADFILES=$(find test_data -type f -exec echo -n "'{}' " ;)

$ git filter-branch --index-filter "git rm -rf --cached --ignore-unmatch $BADFILES" HEAD
Rewrite 14ed3f41474f0a2f624a440e5a106c2768edb67b (66/66)
rm 'test_data/images/001.jpg'
[...snip...]
rm 'test_data/images/281.jpg'
Ref 'refs/heads/master' was rewritten

$ git log -p # looks nice

$ rm -rf .git/refs/original/
$ git reflog expire --all
$ git gc --aggressive --prune
Counting objects: 625, done.
Delta compression using up to 2 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (598/598), done.
Writing objects: 100% (625/625), done.
Total 625 (delta 351), reused 0 (delta 0)

$ du -hs .git
174M    .git
$ # still 175 MB :-(

Answer 1

I answered this elsewhere, and will copy here since I'm proud of it!

... and without further ado, may I present to you this useful script, git-gc-all, guaranteed to remove all your git garbage until they might come up with extra config variables:

git -c gc.reflogExpire=0 -c gc.reflogExpireUnreachable=0 
  -c gc.rerereresolved=0 -c gc.rerereunresolved=0 
  -c gc.pruneExpire=now gc "$@"

The --aggressive option might be helpful.

NOTE: this will remove ALL unreferenced thingies, so don't come crying to me if you decide later that you wanted to keep some of them!

You might also need to run something like these first, oh dear, git is complicated!!

git remote rm origin
rm -rf .git/refs/original/ .git/refs/remotes/ .git/*_HEAD .git/logs/
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/original/ |
  xargs -n1 --no-run-if-empty git update-ref -d

I put all this in a script, here:

http://sam.nipl.net/b/git-gc-all-ferocious