How do i remove local untracked files from the current git working tree

To delete untracked files from the current working tree in Git, you can use the git clean command. This command removes all untracked files in the working tree, i.e., files not specified in the .gitignore file and not under Git version control.

The following are some options you can use with git clean:

• -n or --dry-run: Used to simulate the deletion operation, showing which files will be deleted without actually performing the deletion.
• -f or --force: Required to actually perform the deletion, as it is a destructive operation that Git does not execute by default.
• -d: Allows the command to delete untracked directories as well as untracked files.
• -x: Ignores rules in the .gitignore file, deleting all untracked files, including those specified in .gitignore.
• -X: Deletes only untracked files that are ignored by the .gitignore file.

For example, if you want to delete all untracked files in the working tree (but keep untracked directories), you can do the following:

shell
 git clean -f

If you also want to delete untracked directories, you can use:

shell
 git clean -fd

If you want to preview which files and directories will be deleted (without actually deleting them), you can run:

shell
 git clean -nfd

Note: git clean is a dangerous operation because the deleted files cannot be recovered from Git history. Before running the git clean command, ensure that you do not need the untracked files in the working tree. Always use the --dry-run option to preview the files to be deleted.

Simple Method to Delete Untracked Files

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To delete all untracked files, the simple method is to first add all files and reset the working tree, as shown below.

bash
git add --all
git reset --hard HEAD

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Use git clean -f -d to ensure directories are also deleted.

1. Do not actually delete anything; instead, it shows what will be deleted.

   git clean -n

   Or

   git clean --dry-run

2. Also deletes untracked directories. If an untracked directory is managed by a different Git repository, it is not deleted by default. To delete such directories, use the -f option twice.

   git clean -fd

Then, you can verify that the files have been removed by running git status.