NAME¶
git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
SYNOPSIS¶
git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] [<pathspec>...]
DESCRIPTION¶
Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not
under version control, starting from the current directory.
Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the
-x option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for
example, be useful to remove all build products.
If any optional <pathspec>... arguments are given,
only those paths that match the pathspec are affected.
OPTIONS¶
-d
Normally, when no <pathspec> is specified, git
clean will not recurse into untracked directories to avoid removing too much.
Specify -d to have it recurse into such directories as well. If a
<pathspec> is specified, -d is irrelevant; all untracked files matching
the specified paths (with exceptions for nested git directories mentioned
under --force) will be removed.
-f, --force
If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is
not set to false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories
unless given -f or -i. Git will refuse to modify untracked nested git
repositories (directories with a .git subdirectory) unless a second -f is
given.
-i, --interactive
Show what would be done and clean files interactively.
See “Interactive mode” for details.
-n, --dry-run
Don’t actually remove anything, just show what
would be done.
-q, --quiet
Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are
successfully removed.
-e <pattern>, --exclude=<pattern>
Use the given exclude pattern in addition to the standard
ignore rules (see
gitignore(5)).
-x
Don’t use the standard ignore rules (see
gitignore(5)), but still use the ignore rules given with
-e
options from the command line. This allows removing all untracked files,
including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction with
git restore or
git reset) to create a pristine working directory
to test a clean build.
-X
Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to
rebuild everything from scratch, but keep manually created files.
INTERACTIVE MODE¶
When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the files
and directories to be cleaned, and goes into its interactive command
loop.
The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and
gives a prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends
with a single >, you can pick only one of the choices given and
type return, like this:
*** Commands ***
1: clean 2: filter by pattern 3: select by numbers
4: ask each 5: quit 6: help
What now> 1
You also could say c or clean above as long as the
choice is unique.
The main command loop has 6 subcommands.
clean
Start cleaning files and directories, and then
quit.
filter by pattern
This shows the files and directories to be deleted and
issues an "Input ignore patterns>>" prompt. You can input
space-separated patterns to exclude files and directories from deletion. E.g.
"*.c *.h" will exclude files ending with ".c" and
".h" from deletion. When you are satisfied with the filtered result,
press ENTER (empty) back to the main menu.
select by numbers
This shows the files and directories to be deleted and
issues an "Select items to delete>>" prompt. When the prompt
ends with double >> like this, you can make more than one
selection, concatenated with whitespace or comma. Also you can say ranges.
E.g. "2-5 7,9" to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the list. If the second
number in a range is omitted, all remaining items are selected. E.g.
"7-" to choose 7,8,9 from the list. You can say * to choose
everything. Also when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER
(empty) back to the main menu.
ask each
This will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one
in order to delete items. Please note that this action is not as efficient as
the above two actions.
quit
This lets you quit without doing any cleaning.
help
Show brief usage of interactive git-clean.
CONFIGURATION¶
Everything below this line in this section is selectively included
from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as
what’s found there:
clean.requireForce
A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f,
-i, or -n. Defaults to true.