- Sources: FreeBSD history-rewrite announcement, FreeBSD freeze page, Phoronix, HN 49048797
- Summary: A commit to the
misc/github-copilot-cli port on 2026-07-20 added the complete 150MB Linux binary of the GitHub Copilot CLI to the FreeBSD ports tree. The file exceeds GitHub's hard 100MB limit, so mirroring to GitHub and possibly other forges failed. FreeBSD's core team suspended pushes on 2026-07-21 and announced the freeze on 2026-07-22, stating the tree was not compromised and users were not at risk. Kyle Evans for core and Rene Ladan for portmgr announced on 2026-07-24 that the history had been rewritten to remove the blob, also citing the binary's own license as unsuitable for the repository history. Every commit in main after a70c5c3fd44b now has a different hash. Users are directed to a published reset script, and committers to rebase local branches onto the new upstream commit. Patch files are unaffected and the script strips signatures so the result is reproducible. - Why it matters: A single oversized commit took a package tree read-only for days and forced a history rewrite on everyone downstream, which is the cost of carrying a mirror on a forge whose file-size limit is stricter than your own.
- Follow-up: Watch for the stated infrastructure repairs to complete and for whether FreeBSD adds a pre-receive size check to prevent a repeat.
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