Git repos have lots of write protected files in the .git directory, sometimes hundreds, and the default rm my_project_managed_by_git will prompt before deleting each write protected file. So, to actually delete my project I have to do rm -rf my_project_managed_by_git.

Using rm -rf scares me. Is there a reasonable way to delete git repos without it?

  • Mactan@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    its a bit verbose but my preference is rm -r --interactive=never directoryname

    i really try to avoid rf for myself

  • qaz@lemmy.world
    0·
    2 years ago

    You can use ls <PATH> first to check you are deleting the right files. I do this and I’ve never accidentally deleted the wrong files (using rm).

  • gomp@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    The problem is that rm -rf shouldn’t scare you?

    What are the chances something like

    ~/projects/some-project $ cd ..
~/projects $ rm -fr some-project

    may delete unexpected stuff? (especially if you get into the habit of tab-completing the directory argument)

  • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    I’ve shot myself in the foot enough times over the years with rm -rf. Now I use trash-cli. I don’t know what package manager(s) you use, but I install it via Homebrew.

    • Buttons@programming.devOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      More like, I’m afraid of the command doing more than I’m trying to do.

      What I want to do is ignore prompts about write-protected files in the .git directory, what it does is ignore all prompts for all files.

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    If you’re scared to do rm -rf, do something else that lets you inspect the entire batch of deletions first. Such as:

    find .git ! -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 echo rm -fv

    This will print out all the rm -fv commands that would be run. Once you’ve verifid that that’s what you want to do, run it again without echo to do the actual deletion. If you’re scared of having that in your history, either use a full path for .git, or prepend a space to the non-echo version of the command to make it avoid showing up in your shell history (assuming you have ignorespace in your HISTCONTROL env var)

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    Cd into the directory first, then run rm -rf, then cd back out and rm -r just the directory.

  • flux@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    You should have backups. Preferably also snapshots. Then rm will feel less scary.

  • biribiri11@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    If you’re nervous about rm, there’s many alternatives that work by moving a file to your recycling bin instead of deleting it outright. I think the current fun one is trash-rs, but some distros package trash-cli.

  • nighty@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    Maybe you can create a bash function (and add it to your bash config files) that only executes the rm -rf command we have a .git file around?

    function git-rm {
  if [ -d "$1" ] && [ -d "$1/.git" ]
  then
    rm -rf $1;
  fi
}