Git : How to remove only empty directories(not un-tracked files) in a git repo

Question

By doing some pull's,push's,rebase's,merge's...some empty directories left in my project.

Later I came to know, Git doesn't track directories and there is a command to delete such directories.

git clean -fd
This command will clean up all of the files that are not part of your git repository - including the folders.

but above command is also deleting all untracked files and directories,this is a big lose to ongoing development projects.

Is there any way to delete only empty folders with out touching un-tracked files.

Stash or commit the files you want to keep. There's no reason to have uncommitted changes sitting around in the file system for a long time. — Daniel Mann
– Daniel Mann, Commented Jan 17, 2020 at 22:14

GabLeRoux · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-17 22:05:02Z

5

It seems easier to delegate that specific task (deleting empty folders) to the shell instead of git:

"How do I delete all empty directories in a directory from the command line?" (unix shell):

find . -empty -type d -delete

"How to delete empty folders using windows command prompt?" (Powershell):

Get-ChildItem -Recurse . | where { $_.PSISContainer -and @( $_ | Get-ChildItem ).Count -eq 0 } | Remove-Item

edited Jan 17, 2020 at 22:05

GabLeRoux

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answered May 20, 2015 at 9:36

VonC

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2 Comments

Sunil Kumar Over a year ago

,Thanks for your update.But I have a scenario in my product, Users create projects and each project is auto configured to VCS(git repo).And users can create some resource(like a folder with four files) then they can revert that specific resource any time with out committing to repo.In this case files are deleted but not directory.I am using git apis to interact repo.

GabLeRoux Over a year ago

@SunilKumar just call one of these commands after any delete or checkout action (don't call it when they create a folder as it will disappear right after creation). these commands just work, they will delete all empty folders and git don't track them.

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