git-clean(1)

1GIT-CLEAN(1)                      Git Manual                      GIT-CLEAN(1)
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NAME

6       git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
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SYNOPSIS

9       git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] [<pathspec>...]
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DESCRIPTION

12       Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not
13       under version control, starting from the current directory.
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15       Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the -x option
16       is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for example, be
17       useful to remove all build products.
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19       If any optional <pathspec>... arguments are given, only those paths
20       that match the pathspec are affected.
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OPTIONS

23       -d
24           Normally, when no <pathspec> is specified, git clean will not
25           recurse into untracked directories to avoid removing too much.
26           Specify -d to have it recurse into such directories as well. If a
27           <pathspec> is specified, -d is irrelevant; all untracked files
28           matching the specified paths (with exceptions for nested git
29           directories mentioned under --force) will be removed.
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31       -f, --force
32           If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to
33           false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless
34           given -f or -i. Git will refuse to modify untracked nested git
35           repositories (directories with a .git subdirectory) unless a second
36           -f is given.
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38       -i, --interactive
39           Show what would be done and clean files interactively. See
40           “Interactive mode” for details.
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42       -n, --dry-run
43           Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
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45       -q, --quiet
46           Be quiet, only report errors, but not the files that are
47           successfully removed.
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49       -e <pattern>, --exclude=<pattern>
50           Use the given exclude pattern in addition to the standard ignore
51           rules (see gitignore(5)).
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53       -x
54           Don’t use the standard ignore rules (see gitignore(5)), but still
55           use the ignore rules given with -e options from the command line.
56           This allows removing all untracked files, including build products.
57           This can be used (possibly in conjunction with git restore or git
58           reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean
59           build.
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61       -X
62           Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild
63           everything from scratch, but keep manually created files.
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INTERACTIVE MODE

66       When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the files and
67       directories to be cleaned, and goes into its interactive command loop.
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69       The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and gives a
70       prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends with a single >,
71       you can pick only one of the choices given and type return, like this:
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73               *** Commands ***
74                   1: clean                2: filter by pattern    3: select by numbers
75                   4: ask each             5: quit                 6: help
76               What now> 1
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78       You also could say c or clean above as long as the choice is unique.
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80       The main command loop has 6 subcommands.
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82       clean
83           Start cleaning files and directories, and then quit.
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85       filter by pattern
86           This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an
87           "Input ignore patterns>>" prompt. You can input space-separated
88           patterns to exclude files and directories from deletion. E.g. "*.c
89           *.h" will exclude files ending with ".c" and ".h" from deletion.
90           When you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER
91           (empty) back to the main menu.
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93       select by numbers
94           This shows the files and directories to be deleted and issues an
95           "Select items to delete>>" prompt. When the prompt ends with double
96           >> like this, you can make more than one selection, concatenated
97           with whitespace or comma. Also you can say ranges. E.g. "2-5 7,9"
98           to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from the list. If the second number in a
99           range is omitted, all remaining items are selected. E.g. "7-" to
100           choose 7,8,9 from the list. You can say * to choose everything.
101           Also when you are satisfied with the filtered result, press ENTER
102           (empty) back to the main menu.
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104       ask each
105           This will start to clean, and you must confirm one by one in order
106           to delete items. Please note that this action is not as efficient
107           as the above two actions.
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109       quit
110           This lets you quit without doing any cleaning.
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112       help
113           Show brief usage of interactive git-clean.
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CONFIGURATION

116       Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from
117       the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what’s
118       found there:
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120       clean.requireForce
121           A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f, -i, or -n.
122           Defaults to true.
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GIT

128       Part of the git(1) suite
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132Git 2.43.0                        11/20/2023                      GIT-CLEAN(1)