@kode54
If you want to see the email addresses used in the git commits, here is a command:

git log --all --format='%an <%ae>%n%cn <%ce>'|sort|uniq

You may also want to check the email addresses used in tags. e.g. git cat-file -p v1.0.0|grep ^tagger

git packfiles are compressed, so 17MB of content might take up less space in the packfile.

To push a repo in parts, one way to do it is as follows:

• Set environmental variable DRY_RUN=1 to make git ssb output message content to the terminal instead of publishing it.
• Run git log --oneline to get the list of commits.
• Find an old commit in that list. Run git push ssb <commit>:master to push that commit and its history.
• Check the outputed message for the size of the packfile blob to see if it is below 5MB. If it is above 5MB, try again with an older commit. Otherwise re-run the command with the DRY_RUN env var unset, to publish it for real. Then pick a newer commit and push it.

Alternatively to using the "DRY_RUN" environmental variable, you could use the ssb-publishguard plugin. That lets you review and optionally cancel publishing any message that your ssb app is about to publish.

Making git-ssb automatically split a large packfile is this issue: %Vyh2gmm...