git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
Synopsis
git clean [-d] [-f] [-i] [-n] [-q] [-e <pattern>] [-x | -X] [--] <path>…
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 <path>...
arguments are given, only those paths are affected.
Step 1 is to show what will be deleted by using the -n
option:
# Print out the list of files and directories which will be removed (dry run)
git clean -n -d
Clean Step - beware: this will delete files:
# Delete the files from the repository
git clean -f
- To remove directories, run
git clean -f -d
or git clean -fd
- To remove ignored files, run
git clean -f -X
or git clean -fX
- To remove ignored and non-ignored files, run
git clean -f -x
or git clean -fx
Note the case difference on the X
for the two latter commands.
If clean.requireForce
is set to "true" (the default) in your configuration, one needs to specify -f
otherwise nothing will actually happen.
Again see the git-clean
docs for more information.
Options
-f
, --force
If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to
false, git clean will refuse to run unless given -f
, -n
or -i
.
-x
Don’t use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per
directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude
, but do still use the ignore
rules given with -e
options. This allows removing all untracked files,
including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction
with 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.
-n
, --dry-run
Don’t actually remove anything, just show what would be done.
-d
Remove untracked directories in addition to untracked files. If an
untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is
not removed by default. Use -f
option twice if you really want to
remove such a directory.
Undo a commit & redo
$ git commit -m "Something terribly misguided" # (0: Your Accident)
$ git reset HEAD~ # (1)
[ edit files as necessary ] # (2)
$ git add . # (3)
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD # (4)
This command is responsible for the undo. It will undo your last commit while leaving your working tree (the state of your files on disk) untouched. You'll need to add them again before you can commit them again).
Make corrections to working tree files.
git add
anything that you want to include in your new commit.
Commit the changes, reusing the old commit message. reset
copied the old head to .git/ORIG_HEAD
; commit
with -c ORIG_HEAD
will open an editor, which initially contains the log message from the old commit and allows you to edit it. If you do not need to edit the message, you could use the -C
option.
Alternatively, to edit the previous commit (or just its commit message), commit --amend
will add changes within the current index to the previous commit.
To remove (not revert) a commit that has been pushed to the server, rewriting history with git push origin master --force
is necessary.
Further Reading
How can I move HEAD back to a previous location? (Detached head) & Undo commits
The above answer will show you git reflog
, which you can use to determine the SHA-1 for the commit to which you wish to revert. Once you have this value, use the sequence of commands as explained above.
HEAD~
is the same as HEAD~1
. The article What is the HEAD in git? is helpful if you want to uncommit multiple commits.
Best Solution
In Git 1.7.0 and later, you can checkout a new branch:
Edit files, add and commit. Then push with the
-u
(short for--set-upstream
) option:Git will set up the tracking information during the push.