Re: ``git clean -xdf'' and ``make clean''

From: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 7, 2017, 19:35 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+P7+xpesQVS5qZJZ5wd31eJDLmb5j0Xdq_rwajjoskB07ELfg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <fe8595aa-0395-e948-13e9-f952541d106e@tngtech.com>

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 7:07 AM, Cornelius Weig <cornelius.weig@tngtech.com> wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> On 02/07/2017 03:17 PM, Hongyi Zhao wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> In order to delete all of the last build stuff, does the following two
>> methods equivalent or not?
>>
>> ``git clean -xdf'' and ``make clean''
>
> No, it is not equivalent.
>
> * `make clean` removes any build-related files (assuming that the
> `clean` target is properly written). To see exactly what it would do,
> run `make clean -n`. Judging from your question, I think this is what
> you want to do.
>
> * `git clean -xdf` would remove any files that git does not track. This
> also includes build-related files, but also any other files that happen
> to be in your working directory. For example, any output from `git
> format-patch` would be removed by this, but not `make clean`.

Make clean can run arbitrary code, and really depends on the implementation. git clean -xdf will result in all non-tracked files being removed, which should restore you to a pristine pre-build state. However, this can have unfortunate side effect of destroying files which you might not expect.

Properly written, a make clean shouldn't remove anything except what could be regenerated by make. But that's just a strong convention.

Regards, Jake