Git checkout/pull doesn't remove directories?

git git-clean
mculp picture mculp · Sep 30, 2009 · Viewed 41k times · Source

I've got my repo @ github. I did some work at home and pushed it to github. It involved some deleting of files and directories. Now I'm on my work box, which had a copy of the code before deleting the files and directories.

I issued the following:

git remote update
git checkout HEAD
git pull origin HEAD

It deleted all of the files it should have, but not the directories the files were in.

Two questions:

  1. Why did it not remove the directories?
  2. Is there a git command I can issue in the current state to remove them?

Answer

mipadi picture mipadi · Sep 30, 2009

Git doesn't track directories, so it won't remove ones that become empty as a result of a merge or other change. However, you can use git clean -fd to remove untracked directories (the -fd flag means force removal of untracked files and directories).

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