Tell me more ×
Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 5 down vote favorite

How do I recursively delete all .svn directories, starting with the directory I am in?

share|improve this question
1  
What platform -- Windows? Linux/UNIX? Something else? – Chris J Jun 1 '11 at 15:36
possible duplicate of Command to recursively remove all .svn directories on Windows – Chris J Jun 1 '11 at 15:37
It's on Linux, Debian – FinalForm Jun 1 '11 at 15:38
Funny enough, I needed this in the morning when committing something to a mercurial repository. I ended up adding everything and removing the .svn folders before committing instead. And now you come up with this question, apparently Ned's solution is what I needed... – Tom Wijsman Jun 1 '11 at 18:49

migrated from stackoverflow.com Jun 1 '11 at 15:43

3 Answers

up vote 11 down vote

Keep in mind that svn provides the "export" command that provides you with a copy of your working tree, but without all the .svn directories sprinkled in. This could be what you want.

$ svn export /tmp/copy_of_my_tree
share|improve this answer
this won't work for a repo, you have no access to (e.g. zipped and mailed to you) – mbx Aug 8 '11 at 15:24
up vote 7 down vote

If you're working in Linux (or equivalent), you can just do the following:

find . -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;
share|improve this answer
1  
Or, better, and as Piskvor mentions, use -type d to ensure that one isn't accidentally deleting something that isn't a directory. – JdeBP Jun 1 '11 at 21:10
up vote 5 down vote

In any modern UN*X-like system (Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD):

find . -type d -name '.svn' -exec rm -rf {} \;

find:

  • in the current directory
  • directories
  • with name .svn
  • and when found, run rm -rf on each
share|improve this answer
4  
That's almost the canonical idiom. You forgot xargs to reduce the number of rm processes needed: find . -type d -name '.svn' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf -- – JdeBP Jun 1 '11 at 21:12
To add to @JdeBP's comment: Some find implementations also support -exec rm -rf {} + or even -delete to achieve the same thing. – grawity Jun 2 '11 at 11:06

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.