jenkins Wipe out repository and force clone vs Clean before checkout

Question

I am trying to understand the difference between the two options “Wipe out repository and force clone” and “Clean before checkout” for pulling a git repo. Looking at the help section for both options, both seem to have similar functionality and I can't make out the difference. Here's how they look:

Wipe out repository & force clone:

Delete the contents of the workspace before building, ensuring a fully fresh workspace.

Clean before checkout

Clean up the workspace before every checkout by deleting all untracked files and directories, including those which are specified in .gitignore. It also resets all tracked files to their versioned state. This ensures that the workspace is in the same state as if you cloned and checked out in a brand-new empty directory, and ensures that your build is not affected by the files generated by the previous build.

I couldn't find any comparison between the two options; neither in Jenkins/GitPlugin wiki, nor in stack overflow, and not even in google. We currently have both options, but we are planning to reduce build time by removing the “Wipe out repository and force clone” option. But I don't want to break any functionality while doing this. Please explain the difference if you're sure. Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Wipe out repository & force clone will clean the entire project workspace and clone the project once again before building. It could be time consuming depends on the project size. If the project is 1GB, it downloads 1GB everytime you build it.

Clean before checkout removes the files created as part of build - say your test results etc - resets the files if they were updated & pulls the latest changes if they have been updated. This ensures that the workspace is in the same state as if you cloned and checked out in a brand-new empty directory. It downloads only the delta which could be few MBs. So it is less time consuming.

So you can go ahead use Clean before checkout without affecting the build. Have been using this option for more than 4 years without any issues.