# Easy way to empty working tree? 3 messages from 2006-07-21 to 2006-07-21. Participants: Robin Luckey, Linus Torvalds, Alex Riesen. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/4934 ## Robin Luckey, 2006-07-21 01:28 Subject: Easy way to empty working tree? Message-ID: <761519800607201828m19684b2jc267411ef3b8b9e2@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/761519800607201828m19684b2jc267411ef3b8b9e2%40mail.gmail.com ``` I have some very large git repositories that serve mainly as archives, and it would be nice to clear out the working directories for the repositories I am not currently working with. I'm not trying to delete the files from the repository, I just want free up space in idle repositories. After mothballing the repository with git-repack -a -d and git clean -d -x, is there a convenient one-liner to empty the files out the working directory? Thanks, Robin ``` ## Linus Torvalds, 2006-07-21 02:48 Subject: Re: Easy way to empty working tree? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/Pine.LNX.4.64.0607201944460.29649%40g5.osdl.org In-Reply-To: <761519800607201828m19684b2jc267411ef3b8b9e2@mail.gmail.com> ``` On Thu, 20 Jul 2006, Robin Luckey wrote: > > I have some very large git repositories that serve mainly as archives, > and it would be nice to clear out the working directories for the > repositories I am not currently working with. I'm not trying to delete > the files from the repository, I just want free up space in idle > repositories. Well, that actually sounds like you might want to just make them totally "bare" repositories, ie you can just do something like mv repo/.git repo.git rm -rf repo and then "repo.git" is a valid bare repository. However, if you actually want to just clear the checked-out files: > After mothballing the repository with git-repack -a -d and git clean > -d -x, is there a convenient one-liner to empty the files out the > working directory? Well, you can do git ls-files -z | xargs -0 rm -f -- or something, or indeed just do a "rm -rf *", since the only thing you actually would want to save is the ".git" directory. Linus ``` ## Alex Riesen, 2006-07-21 07:08 Subject: Re: Easy way to empty working tree? Message-ID: <81b0412b0607210008l45198948sab391a8cf94c7af8@mail.gmail.com> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/81b0412b0607210008l45198948sab391a8cf94c7af8%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On 7/21/06, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > After mothballing the repository with git-repack -a -d and git clean > > -d -x, is there a convenient one-liner to empty the files out the > > working directory? > > Well, you can do > > git ls-files -z | xargs -0 rm -f -- > That'd be not enough for kernel after it was compiled. Maybe this: find . -maxdepth 1 -not -name .git -not -name . -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf -- ```