How to delete all changes from working directory including new untracked files. I know that git checkout -f does that, but it doesn't delete new untracked files created since last commit.

git checkout -f

Does anybody have an idea how to do that?

git help reset

git help clean

12 Answers
12

git reset --hard # removes staged and working directory changes

## !! be very careful with these !!
## you may end up deleting what you don't want to
## read comments and manual.
git clean -f -d # remove untracked
git clean -f -x -d # CAUTION: as above but removes ignored files like config.
git clean -fxd :/ # CAUTION: as above, but cleans untracked and ignored files through the entire repo (without :/, the operation affects only the current directory)


git clean -fxd

git clean -f -d

Safest method, which I use frequently:

git clean -fd


git clean -nd .

git clean -fd .

add -A

commit -a

revert head

git clean

For all unstaged files use:

git checkout -- .


The . at the end is important.

.

You can replace . with a sub-directory name to clear only a specific sub-directory of your project. The problem is addressed specifically here.

.

Have a look at the git clean command.

git clean

git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree

Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory.

Normally, only files unknown to git are removed, but if the -x option is specified, ignored files are also removed. This can, for example, be useful to remove all build products.

The following works:

git add -A .
git stash
git stash drop stash@{0}


Please note that this will discard both your unstaged and staged local changes. So you should commit anything you want to keep, before you run these commands.

A typical use case: You moved a lot of files or directories around, and then want to get back to the original state.

Credits: https://stackoverflow.com/a/52719/246724

git stash drop

git add -A .

You can do this in two steps:

git checkout -f

git clean -fd

I thought it was (warning: following will wipe out everything)

$ git reset --hard HEAD
$ git clean -fd


The reset to undo changes. The clean to remove any untracked files and directories.

reset

clean

git pull

CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in...

git pull --strategy=ours

git reset --hard origin/{branchName}


It will delete all untracked files.

An alternative solution is to commit the changes, and then get rid of those commits. This does not have an immediate benefit at first, but it opens up the possibility to commit in chunks, and to create a git tag for backup.

You can do it on the current branch, like this:

git add (-A) .
git commit -m"DISCARD: Temporary local changes"
git tag archive/local-changes-2015-08-01 # optional
git revert HEAD
git reset HEAD^^


Or you can do it on detached HEAD. (assuming you start on BRANCHNAME branch):

git checkout --detach HEAD
git add (-A) .
git commit -m"DISCARD: Temporary local changes"
git tag archive/local-changes-2015-08-01 # optional
git checkout BRANCHNAME


However, what I usually do is to commit in chunks, then name some or all commits as "DISCARD: ...". Then use interactive rebase to remove the bad commits and keep the good ones.

git add -p # Add changes in chunks.
git commit -m"DISCARD: Some temporary changes for debugging"
git add -p # Add more stuff.
git commit -m"Docblock improvements"
git tag archive/local-changes-2015-08-01
git rebase -i (commit id) # rebase on the commit id before the changes.
# Remove the commits that say "DISCARD".


This is more verbose, but it allows to review exactly which changes you want to discard.

The git lol and git lola shortcuts have been very helpful with this workflow.

git lol

git lola

git clean -i will first show you the items to be deleted and proceed after your confirmation. I find this useful when dealing with important files that should not be deleted accidentally.

git clean -i

See git help clean for more information, including some other useful options.

git help clean

If you want to discard all changes, you can use any of the valid options in an alias in .gitconfig. For instance:

.gitconfig

[alias]
discard = "!f() { git add . && git stash && git stash drop stash@{0}; }; f"


Usage: git discard

git discard

For a specific folder I used:

git checkout -- FolderToClean/*


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