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 delete files or directories 38 unless given -f, -n or -i. Git will refuse to delete directories 39 with .git sub directory or file unless a second -f 40 is given. This affects also git submodules where the storage area 41 of the removed submodule under .git/modules/ is not removed until 42 -f is given twice. 43 44-i:: 45--interactive:: 46 Show what would be done and clean files interactively. See 47 ``Interactive mode'' for details. 48 49-n:: 50--dry-run:: 51 Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done. 52 53-q:: 54--quiet:: 55 Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are 56 successfully removed. 57 58-e <pattern>:: 59--exclude=<pattern>:: 60 In addition to those found in .gitignore (per directory) and 61 $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, also consider these patterns to be in the 62 set of the ignore rules in effect. 63 64-x:: 65 Don't use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per 66 directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore 67 rules given with `-e` options. This allows removing all untracked 68 files, including build products. This can be used (possibly in 69 conjunction with 'git reset') to create a pristine 70 working directory to test a clean build. 71 72-X:: 73 Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild 74 everything from scratch, but keep manually created files. 75 76Interactive mode 77---------------- 78When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the 79files and directories to be cleaned, and goes into its 80interactive command loop. 81 82The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and 83gives a prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends 84with a single '>', you can pick only one of the choices given 85and type return, like this: 86 87------------ 88 *** Commands *** 89 1: clean 2: filter by pattern 3: select by numbers 90 4: ask each 5: quit 6: help 91 What now> 1 92------------ 93 94You also could say `c` or `clean` above as long as the choice is unique. 95 96The main command loop has 6 subcommands. 97 98clean:: 99 100 Start cleaning files and directories, and then quit. 101 102filter by pattern:: 103 104 This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an 105 "Input ignore patterns>>" prompt. You can input space-separated 106 patterns to exclude files and directories from deletion. 107 E.g. "*.c *.h" will excludes files end with ".c" and ".h" from 108 deletion. When you are satisfied with the filtered result, press 109 ENTER (empty) back to the main menu. 110 111select by numbers:: 112 113 This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an 114 "Select items to delete>>" prompt. When the prompt ends with double 115 '>>' like this, you can make more than one selection, concatenated 116 with whitespace or comma. Also you can say ranges. E.g. "2-5 7,9" 117 to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the list. If the second number in a 118 range is omitted, all remaining items are selected. E.g. "7-" to 119 choose 7,8,9 from the list. You can say '*' to choose everything. 120 Also when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER 121 (empty) back to the main menu. 122 123ask each:: 124 125 This will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one in order 126 to delete items. Please note that this action is not as efficient 127 as the above two actions. 128 129quit:: 130 131 This lets you quit without do cleaning. 132 133help:: 134 135 Show brief usage of interactive git-clean. 136 137SEE ALSO 138-------- 139linkgit:gitignore[5] 140 141GIT 142--- 143Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite