How to remove untracked files from a Perforce working tree? - perforce

Question

What's the equivalent of "git clean" with Perforce?
git-clean - Remove untracked files from the working tree
Cleans the working tree by recursively removing files that are not under version control, starting from the current directory.
-x Don’t use the standard ignore rules read from .gitignore (per
directory) and $GIT_DIR/info/exclude, but do still use the ignore
rules given with -e options. This allows removing all untracked files,
including build products. This can be used (possibly in conjunction
with git reset) to create a pristine working directory to test a clean
build.
-X Remove only files ignored by Git. This may be useful to rebuild
everything from scratch, but keep manually created files.

Answer 1

Using P4V, you can right click on a folder and select "Reconcile Offline Work...". In the middle panel ("Local files not in depot"), all the files that Perforce can find in the folder tree that are not in the depot will be listed. You can select some or all of these and right click and select "Delete Local File"
This isn't a script, but it's much easier than most other solutions on Windows.

Answer 2

Try (for Unix) from your top-level:
# Find all files and filter for those that are unknown by Perforce
find . -type f | p4 -x - fstat 2>&1 > /dev/null | sed 's/ -.*$//' > /tmp/list
### manually check /tmp/list for files you didn't mean to delete
# Go ahead and remove the unwanted files.
xargs rm < /tmp/list
Or, for a clean -f kind of approach just pipe directly to xargs rm instead of first staging the file list in /tmp/list.

Answer 3

The new P4 clean should do the trick

Answer 4

There are subtle differences in behaviour between p4 clean "Restore workspace files to match the state of corresponding depot files
" and git clean "Remove untracked files from the working tree", so read the manuals carefully.
In particular, vanilla p4 clean will revert changes you've made to files outside any pending changelist. Thus it's prudent to the test the outcome with the 'dry run' option p4 clean -n.
As I understand:
p4 clean -a emulates git clean "Remove untracked files from the working tree."
p4 clean -a -I emulates git clean -x "Remove all untracked files, including build products."
To my frustration, there's no exact analogue of git clean -X "Remove only files ignored by Git", but you can approximate it working with p4 reconcile:
p4 reconcile -a && p4 clean -a -I. Untracked files that match the ignore list will be deleted, others will be moved to the default changelist.

Answer 5

There is no equivalent. Perforce has no command to remove files that are not under its control. You can see them in P4V, on the Workspace tab (they have plain white icons rather than the lined icons with the green dot) and delete them manually. If you want to automate the process, the easiest thing to do would be to remove the files from your workspace, delete everything in the directory, then sync it back up. A batch file to do it would look something like this:
p4 sync "//depot/someFolder/...#0"
erase C:\projects\someFolder\*.* /s /q /f
rd C:\projects\someFolder /s /q
p4 sync -f "//depot/someFolder/..."
The first line is optional if you use the force switches on the erase and sync commands.
That solution has its drawbacks however. If you're currently working on any of the files, you obviously don't want to wipe them out. Also, a full sync can take quite a while if there is a huge amount of data in the directory tree you wish to clean.
A better way to do it would be to have your clean utility (I think we've grown beyond a batch file at this point) grab the list of files under version control using the p4 files command. Then iterate through all the files in the directory, deleting those that don't appear on the list.

Answer 6

You can't, frustratingly,. There's no analogue of svn clean or git clean. A shame, these are very useful commands.
Here's an appeal on Perforce's website for the developers to add a clean command. https://perforce.ideas.aha.io/ideas/P4V-I-7

Answer 7

Easy Gui solution as well as examples like the ones already mentioned here:
How to find untracked files in a Perforce tree? (analogue of svn status)

Answer 8

on linux, you can do it without a temporary file:
find . -type f | p4 -x- have 2>&1 >/dev/null | grep "not on client" | cut -d " " -f1 | xargs -ifoo echo rm foo

Answer 9

In Windows:
#ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
IF "%1"=="" (
SET proceed=N
ECHO Are you sure you wish to nuke all files under:
ECHO %CD%
SET /P proceed="Y/N: "
ECHO !proceed!
IF /I "!proceed!"=="Y" (
ECHO Nuking %cd%
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=-#" %%G IN ('p4 reconcile -nlad -f ...') do (
DEL /F "%%G"
)
)
) ELSE IF /I "%1"=="-n" (
ECHO Files to be deleted 1>&2
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=-#" %%G IN ('p4 reconcile -nlad -f ...') do (
ECHO "%%G"
)
) ELSE GOTO :USAGE
GOTO :STOP
:USAGE
ECHO Usage: nuke [-n]
ECHO -n will only write the files to be deleted but will not actually delete them
:STOP

Answer 10

This one works much better:
#ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
IF "%1"=="" (
SET proceed=N
ECHO Are you sure you wish to nuke all files under:
ECHO %CD%
SET /P proceed="Y/N: "
ECHO Looking for files to be deleted. This may take some time depending on the depth of your tree. 1>&2
IF /I "!proceed!"=="Y" (
ECHO Nuking %cd%
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=#" %%G IN ('p4 reconcile -nla -f ...') DO (
DEL /F %%G
)
)
) ELSE IF /I "%1"=="-n" (
ECHO Looking for files to be deleted. This may take some time depending on the depth of your tree. 1>&2
ECHO Files to be deleted 1>&2
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=#" %%G IN ('p4 reconcile -nla -f ...') DO (
ECHO %%G
)
) ELSE GOTO :USAGE
GOTO :STOP
:USAGE
ECHO Usage: nuke [-n]
ECHO -n will only write the files to be deleted but will not actually delete them
:STOP

Answer 11

I use next commands in case if my changelist doesn't have changes.
Run 'p4 reconcile' command that reconcile all changes made outside of Perforce (-a key can be used if you need only untracked files).
Run 'p4 revert path\...,v' that removes service files (with ,v suffix, they are added by reconcile) from changelist but left them in file system
Run 'p4 revert -w path\...' thet removes all other files from changelist and disk.