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How can I clear my working directory in Git?
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The easiest way to clear your Git cache is to use the “git rm” command with the “–cached” option. You can choose to remove one file or to remove an entire working directory.
Remember, your code repository holds the main branch of a project. Running git reset will typically delete files and commits. And without those, you don't have a project! This is why it's critical to plan ahead when using it, so you don't end up deleting elements that are critical for your project.
Summary. To recap, git clean is a convenience method for deleting untracked files in a repo's working directory. Untracked files are those that are in the repo's directory but have not yet been added to the repo's index with git add .
To reset a specific file to the last-committed state (to discard uncommitted changes in a specific file):
git checkout thefiletoreset.txt This is mentioned in the git status output:
(use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory) To reset the entire repository to the last committed state:
git reset --hard To remove untracked files, I usually just delete all files in the working copy (but not the .git/ folder!), then do git reset --hard which leaves it with only committed files.
A better way is to use git clean (warning: using the -x flag as below will cause Git to delete ignored files):
git clean -d -x -f will remove untracked files, including directories (-d) and files ignored by git (-x). Replace the -f argument with -n to perform a dry-run or -i for interactive mode, and it will tell you what will be removed.
Relevant links:
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Use:
git clean -df It's not well advertised, but git clean is really handy. Git Ready has a nice introduction to git clean.
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