Why git clean -f does not remove all the untracked files?

Question

I hit this today:

% git checkout another_branch
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
        __version__.txt
        alembic.ini
        alembic/README
        alembic/env.py
        alembic/script.py.mako
        folder1/file1
        folder2/file2
        ....
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

OK, so I'll remove untracked files:

% git clean -f
Not removing alembic/
Not removing tools/maintenance/

However, it seems that not all untracked files have been removed:

% git checkout another_branch
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
        alembic/README
        alembic/env.py
        alembic/script.py.mako
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

What's weird is that at first git checkout another_branch git knew about those particular untracked files it later complained about (alembic/README, alembic/env.py, alembic/script.py.mako).

So why git did not delete them?

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-05 10:57:06Z

2

Do the directories contain .git subdirectories or files?

-f, --force

If the Git configuration variable clean.requireForce is not set to false, git clean will refuse to delete files or directories unless given -f, -n or -i. Git will refuse to delete directories with .git sub directory or file unless a second -f is given. This affects also git submodules where the storage area of the removed submodule under .git/modules/ is not removed until -f is given twice.

answered Nov 5, 2015 at 10:57

choroba

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1 Comment

Nick P Over a year ago

Thank you. This was the problem I had, and this is the command which finally worked: git clean -f -f -d -d

giosh94mhz · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-05 10:59:14Z

1

There are two kind of untracked files: untracked files and ignored files.

When running as git clean (-f is just to override a "safety" config option), git will only remove untracked files, when running as git clean -x it will remove both untracked and ignored files.

For the checkout issue, it is probably triggered by different .gitignore files in the two branches.

answered Nov 5, 2015 at 10:59

giosh94mhz

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