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.

Iodism

Answer 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= 

Islington

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

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

Answer 2

The proper way without purge is:

hg st -un0 | xargs -0 rm

Undershorts

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

@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'. – Islington

@Islington , 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. – Miscellanea

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. – Flasher

@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. – Rendon

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. – Drawbar

Answer 3

Thanks! This worked for me also in Powershell:

hg st -un | rm

Tamatamable

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

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

Answer 4

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)

Seriatim

Answer 5

Try following:

hg st -un | xargs rm

Heretic

Answer 6

rm $(hg st -u)

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

Bavaria

Answer 7

This should do the trick:

hg status | grep '^\?' | sed 's/^\? //' | xargs rm -rf

Dismember

Answer 8

if you don't want to use purge:

rm $(hg st | grep ^? | awk '{print $2}')

Fortyish

Answer 9

This works from Windows 10 command line (used cautiously of course):

for /f %g in ('hg status -un') do @echo %g & @del %g

Flitting

Answer 10

Assuming that you are using a *nix system you could run something like this:

rm `hg st | awk '/\?/ {print $2}'`

from the root of the mercurial repository.

I don't know of a standard mercurial command to achieve the same but I believe there are many more command-line options to do this. I'm sure there are "better" solutions and would be interested to hear any other suggestions.

Please use this command with caution as it was not thoroughly tested.

Oxcart

Answer 11

A quick/hacky way, if you do not have local changes, is to delete the folders you want from the file manager (Windows explorer for example) and then use "hg revert" which restores only the tracked files.

Grownup