Deleting untracked files from git
September 05, 2019
The problem:
Have you ever tried to pull down some new changes and come across this error?
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:resources/views/untrackedFolder/untrackedFile.blade.phpresources/views/untrackedFolder/anotherUntrackedFile.blade.phpPlease move or remove them before you can merge.Aborting
Untracked files huh? Okay, that doesn't sound too difficult. You should be able to run
git reset --hard
But wait
They are still there! What gives !?
The reason is because git reset --hard
only removes files that are already a part of the repo
Solution
From the git docs, we will find this command:
git clean -n
-n
this flag will show you what files will be removed.
You should use this flag first to determine what is going to be removed.
git clean -f
-f
this flag means it will delete the files permanently.
Other useful commands
git clean -fd
will also delete folders
git clean -fX
removes ignored files
git clean -fx
removes both ignored and non-ignored files
There you go, you should have a clean repository that has the changes committed before.