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?

    • Buttons@programming.devOPEnglish
      93·
      1 year 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.

          • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
            1·
            1 year ago

            Generally that is not a concern because regular users won’t be able to rm anything else other than those in his own $HOME.

            Another thing I want to say is, command line is for careful users. If someone is careless, they should create a wrapper around rm, or just use a FM.

            • ffhein@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 year ago

              If someone is careless, they should create a wrapper around rm, or just use a FM.

              I think that’s the situation OP is in… They don’t trust themself with these kinds of commands, while other commenters here are trying to convince them that they should just use rm -rf anyway

          • Buttons@programming.devOPEnglish
            54·
            1 year ago

            That’s a good example. If I’m regularly running a command that is a single whitespace character away from disaster, that’s a problem.

            Imagine a fighter aircraft that had an eject button on the side of the flight stick. The pilot complains “I’m afraid I might accidentally hit the eject button when I don’t need to”, but everyone responds “why would you push the eject button if you don’t want to eject?”, or “so your concern is that the eject button will cause you to eject…?” – That’s how I feel right now.

  • davel [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
    241·
    1 year 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.

  • gomp@lemmy.ml
    91·
    1 year 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)

  • krnl386@lemmy.ca
    6·
    1 year ago

    If you’re that worried, why not run chmod -R u+w .git inside the project dir to “un write-protect” the files, then just ascend to the directory containing the project dir (cd …) and use rm -r without -f?

    The force flag (-f) is the scary one, I presume?

  • biribiri11@lemmy.ml
    5·
    1 year 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.

  • Mactan@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

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

    i really try to avoid rf for myself

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
    3·
    1 year ago

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

    E:fb

  • qaz@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year 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).

  • flux@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 year ago

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

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    1 year 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. It’s basically rm -rf --dry-run, but rm doesn’t have that common option. Once you’ve verified 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)

    I use this xargs echo pattern a lot when I’m crafting commands that are potentially destructive or change lots of things.