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.
Careful: git reset --hard
WILL DELETE YOUR WORKING DIRECTORY CHANGES. Be sure to stash any local changes you want to keep before running this command.
Assuming you are sitting on that commit, then this command will wack it...
git reset --hard HEAD~1
The HEAD~1
means the commit before head.
Or, you could look at the output of git log
, find the commit id of the commit you want to back up to, and then do this:
git reset --hard <sha1-commit-id>
If you already pushed it, you will need to do a force push to get rid of it...
git push origin HEAD --force
However, if others may have pulled it, then you would be better off starting a new branch. Because when they pull, it will just merge it into their work, and you will get it pushed back up again.
If you already pushed, it may be better to use git revert
, to create a "mirror image" commit that will undo the changes. However, both commits will be in the log.
FYI -- git reset --hard HEAD
is great if you want to get rid of WORK IN PROGRESS. It will reset you back to the most recent commit, and erase all the changes in your working tree and index.
Lastly, if you need to find a commit that you "deleted", it is typically present in git reflog
unless you have garbage collected your repository.
Best Answer
From the theoretical point of view:
From the technical point of view:
refs/tags/
namespace, and can point to tag objects (annotated and optionally GPG signed tags) or directly to commit object (less used lightweight tag for local names), or in very rare cases even to tree object or blob object (e.g. GPG signature).refs/heads/
namespace, and can point only to commit objects. TheHEAD
pointer must refer to a branch (symbolic reference) or directly to a commit (detached HEAD or unnamed branch).refs/remotes/<remote>/
namespace, and follow ordinary branches in remote repository<remote>
.See also gitglossary manpage: