Everyday Git: Clean up and start over

Yes, this is still a Rails blog–but being productive in Rails means a lot more than just knowing Ruby and the framework. You also need to know your way around a version control system. That (hopefully) means Git. There are lots of excellent introductions to Git already available. If there’s interest I can put together a list of some of my favorites. In the meantime, I thought I’d share some other Git workflows I use on a regular basis. Today, I want to share my process for those times when I’ve spiked some code I don’t care to keep–or just made such a mess I want to back up and start over.

This short workflow assumes you’re already tracking a project with Git. It uses the following Git commands:

• git diff
• git reset
• git clean

This process will wipe out all uncommitted work. To hold onto this work for future reference, I like to save out a diff file:

$ git diff > ~/Desktop/spike-cool-new-feature.diff

Don’t forget, git diff won’t include new, untracked files unless you’ve staged them with git add first.

To start cleaning, remove changes to files you’re already tracking in your repository:

$ git reset --hard HEAD

This resets the contents of your project to their state at your most recent commit (HEAD). Again, the --hard flag is destructive–if you don’t have a backup of your work-in-progress, it’s gone!

If you haven’t added any new, untracked files since the previous commit, you’re done. If you have, you can remove them all at once with

$ git clean -fd

The -f flag forces the clean; the -d tag applies it to untracked directories, too. These flags do not clean up files you’re ignoring in your .gitignore file; you can add those with

$ git clean -fdx

Take caution with the -x flag to git clean! It’s handy for cleaning out junk like temp files and old development logs, but it will also delete any other file you’ve specified Git to ignore. For example, your Rails project’s database.yml file could get wiped out if you’re not careful. I almost always find git clean -fd does what I need.

After git clean, your workspace is as fresh as it was following your most recent commit:

$ git status
# On branch add-cool-new-feature
nothing to commit, working directory clean

I hope this little Git productivity boost has been helpful. If you have a different way to accomplish this task, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Thanks for reading!