CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
Tola Odejayi
Tola Odejayi

Reputation: 3059

Using git clean to delete an untracked directory but not delete a subdirectory in that directory

I have the following:

C:\src\MyUntrackedDir
C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBeDeleted1
C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBeDeleted2
C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved

I want to be able to delete C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBeDeleted1 and C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBeDeleted2, but I do not want C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved to be deleted.

I thought that this should work:

git clean -f -d -x -e C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved

But that just ends up deleting everything in C:\src\MyUntrackedDir, including C:\src\MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved.

How can I fix this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 50

Answers (1)

janos
janos

Reputation: 124704

First and foremost, the rules can be tricky. It's crucial to not run git clean -f ... blindly. Replace -f with -n first, and observe what would happen. If the output looks good, only then replace the -n with -f.

If a parent directory is selected for removal (MyUntrackedDir in your example), you cannot exclude items inside, they will all be removed. You could have preserved SubDirToBePreserved this way, for example:

C:
cd src
git clean -f -d -x -e MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved MyUntrackedDir

This way, MyUntrackedDir itself is not selected for removal, only its contents, except the excluded MyUntrackedDir\SubDirToBePreserved.

Another alternative that would also work:

C:
cd src\MyUntrackedDir
git clean -f -d -x -e SubDirToBePreserved

Upvotes: 2

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