How do I delete all untracked files from my working directory in Mercurial?

Question

Is it possible to delete all untracked files from my working directory? Let's say I added a bunch of files to my working directory, didn't add them via 'hg add' and now want to get rid of those new files entirely?

I'm on windows, although I'm using PowerShell, so a combined solution is also possible here.

Solution 1

Add the Mercurial Extension called purge. It is distributed by Mercurial.

This extension adds a “purge” command to “hg” that removes files not known to Mercurial. i.e. untracked Files. So your command would be,

hg purge

It is not enabled by default, maybe to avoid accidentally removing files that you forgot to add.

To install this extension, add this to your mercurial settings file (.hgrc on Unix, Mercurial.ini on Windows)

[extensions]
purge = 

To enable this extension temporarily you can use

hg purge --config extensions.purge= 

Solution 2

The proper way without purge is:

hg st -un0 | xargs -0 rm

Solution 3

Thanks! This worked for me also in Powershell:

hg st -un | rm

Solution 4

rm $(hg st -u)

...where -u stands for "untracked" you can also pick another state.

Solution 5

You can use

hg purge --all

to remove all the ignored and untracked files

(first you need to install the purge extension as explained in some answers)

View more solutions

Comments

[Yaakov Kuperman]

@simplyharsh is this way better or did you just find it less work than adding the extension?

[simplyharsh]

@YaakovKuperman I guess adding extension is lesser work than this command (one time enabling). I do not enable purge extension because I need it less than once in a fortnight. Also call me silly but, typing this command gives me enough time to think again before doing something as desctructive as 'purge'.

[Yaakov Kuperman]

@simplyharsh , that makes sense, but there's two reasons I'd go for purge all the same. First, you can do hg purge --print and see a list of what its going to get rid of before you do the purge. Second, if you do it this way you need to be in the root of the repo for it to work.

[tacaswell]

hg purge --all will delete all un-tracked and ignored files. This is useful for cleaning up in-source builds

[javawizard]

If you don't have any uncommitted modifications that you want to keep, you can also do hg up 0; rm -r *; hg up tip or whatever revision you're currently on.

[Pykler]

to enable the ext temporarily you can use hg purge --config extensions.purge=

[dirkjot]

@javawizard: This is a nice one that made me rethink how hg works. However, it only works because rm -rf * skips dot files and dot directories, including .hg/. By the same token, any other dotfile (say .evil-settings) will also survive and purge is better.

[Michael Kent]

Be aware that there is a difference in behavior between what 'hg st -u' and 'hg purge' finds. 'hg st -u' WILL NOT find untracked empty directories, while 'hg purge' WILL find (and remove) them. That may or may not be important to you.

[Nikos Athanasiou]

xargs does not work in powershell - this is the only answer that's out of the box "windows friendly"

[beauXjames]

agreed...second on xargs not working in powershell...purge is still a viable option, though