clean
The quick little project cleaner.
clean
is a tiny little utility to recursively delete compiled output, editor
cruft, etc. from your projects. It runs in a split second as it will completely
skip over programming language environments such as Python virtual envs,
node_modules, and any hidden dot directories.
Installation
-
Rename the downloaded file to
clean
orclean.exe
. -
Put it somewhere on your PATH.
-
Linux/mac: I recommend
/usr/local/bin/
. Then mark as executable withchmod +x clean
-
Windows: I recommend creating a
tools
folder in your home folder (e.g.C:\Users\YourName\tools\
) and then updating your PATH to include that folder. Then you can put all your own scripts and tools here.
-
-
Open a shell,
cd
to a project, and typeclean
.
Run clean -help
to see full options and usage instructions.
What does it clean?
-
Compiled output (C, C++, Go, etc.) - removes:
.app
.dll
.dylib
.exe
.idb
.ko
.o
.obj
.out
.pdb
.so
.test
-
Python - removes:
__pycache__
directories and their contents..pyc
files.
-
Editors - removes Emacs/Vim backups and autosaves.
-
Custom - specify a string to remove all files ending in that extension.
find
?
Why not use find
is the venerable old standard, but the down side is that it still has to
descend into all directories to do regex comparisons against every path to
decide whether or not to include/exclude. On a large project with huge
node_modules, local Python virtual env, etc. this still takes a lot of time to
run (especially on NTFS, or worse on a spinning disk!)
Configuring find
to delete/ignore everything you want also requires an
unweidly amount of options, arguments, and regular expressions which makes it
difficult to share with other team members (everyone having to pass around their
shell aliases and scripts).
Inspiration
This is inspired by the pyclean
command that ships with Debian, which is used
to delete .pyc
files before uploading/shipping python code.
Contributing
Want to add support for your languages/projects? Please submit a pull request!
Future features may include ability to specify what to delete or what to ignore using a config file, which would be useful for customizing within large projects.