1git-clean(1) 2============ 3 4NAME 5---- 6git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree 7 8SYNOPSIS 9-------- 10[verse] 11'git clean' [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] <path>... 12 13DESCRIPTION 14----------- 15 16Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not 17under version control, starting from the current directory. 18 19Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the '-x' 20option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for 21example, be useful to remove all build products. 22 23If any optional `<path>...` arguments are given, only those paths 24are affected. 25 26OPTIONS 27------- 28-d:: 29 Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. 30 If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git 31 repository, it is not removed by default. Use -f option twice 32 if you really want to remove such a directory. 33 34-f:: 35--force:: 36 If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set 37 to false, 'git clean' will refuse to run unless given -f, -n or 38 -i. 39 40-i:: 41--interactive:: 42 Show what would be done and clean files interactively. See 43 ``Interactive mode'' for details. 44 45-n:: 46--dry-run:: 47 Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done. 48 49-q:: 50--quiet:: 51 Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are 52 successfully removed. 53 54-e <pattern>:: 55--exclude=<pattern>:: 56 In addition to those found in .gitignore (per directory) and 57 $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, also consider these patterns to be in the 58 set of the ignore rules in effect. 59 60-x:: 61 Don't use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per 62 directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore 63 rules given with `-e` options. This allows removing all untracked 64 files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in 65 conjunction with 'git reset') to create a pristine 66 working directory to test a clean build. 67 68-X:: 69 Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild 70 everything from scratch, but keep manually created files. 71 72Interactive mode 73---------------- 74When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the 75files and directories to be cleaned, and goes into its 76interactive command loop. 77 78The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and 79gives a prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends 80with a single '>', you can pick only one of the choices given 81and type return, like this: 82 83------------ 84 *** Commands *** 85 1: clean 2: filter by pattern 3: select by numbers 86 4: ask each 5: quit 6: help 87 What now> 1 88------------ 89 90You also could say `c` or `clean` above as long as the choice is unique. 91 92The main command loop has 6 subcommands. 93 94clean:: 95 96 Start cleaning files and directories, and then quit. 97 98filter by pattern:: 99 100 This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an 101 "Input ignore patterns>>" prompt. You can input space-separated 102 patterns to exclude files and directories from deletion. 103 E.g. "*.c *.h" will excludes files end with ".c" and ".h" from 104 deletion. When you are satisfied with the filtered result, press 105 ENTER (empty) back to the main menu. 106 107select by numbers:: 108 109 This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an 110 "Select items to delete>>" prompt. When the prompt ends with double 111 '>>' like this, you can make more than one selection, concatenated 112 with whitespace or comma. Also you can say ranges. E.g. "2-5 7,9" 113 to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the list. If the second number in a 114 range is omitted, all remaining items are selected. E.g. "7-" to 115 choose 7,8,9 from the list. You can say '*' to choose everything. 116 Also when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER 117 (empty) back to the main menu. 118 119ask each:: 120 121 This will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one in order 122 to delete items. Please note that this action is not as efficient 123 as the above two actions. 124 125quit:: 126 127 This lets you quit without do cleaning. 128 129help:: 130 131 Show brief usage of interactive git-clean. 132 133SEE ALSO 134-------- 135linkgit:gitignore[5] 136 137GIT 138--- 139Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite