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

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. 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. Configuration variable
clean.requireForce is ignored, as this mode gives its own safety
protection by going interactive.

-n, --dry-run
Don't actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
Configuration variable clean.requireForce is ignored, as nothing
will be deleted anyway.

-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 refuse to delete files unless -f is
given. Defaults to true.

SEE ALSO

gitignore(5)

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-CLEAN(1)