Remove all .svn directories at once

* * * * ½ 2 votos

January 19th, 2007 toydi Posted in Common, find, rm, xargs | Hits: 19054 |

When you check out a project code base from a svn repository, each downloaded directory (from top to the deepest) contains a .svn hidden directory that keeps svn’s necessary metadata.

If you want to remove them all at once, here’s one way to do it:

 ~/project_dir $> find -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

find -name .svn searches the current directory hierarchy for files named .svn.

-print0 ensures each filename ended with a null character. This allows filenames that contain newlines/whitespaces to be interpreted correctly by programs that consume the output.

xargs -0 rm -rf receives the output and passes it to rm for file removal. Remember to use -0 option when the input items are terminated by a null character.

Update: Thanks to geek00L, actually find alone is sufficient:

find /project_dir -type d -name .svn -exec rm -rf '{}' +

Update: svn export should be the right tool that does the job (thanks to aizatto):

svn export project_dir new_dir

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geek00L Says:
January 19th, 2007 at 7:25 pm

how about this -

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

Remember to change file type to fit your need. However xargs more faster when searching globally in the system, but I assume if you already know which directory consist the files as you mention so using -exec should be enough.

Cheers

aizatto Says:
January 24th, 2007 at 9:37 am

Should just use the svn export feature…


svn export http://svn.example.com/trunk

Removing Multiple .svn Directories : Kliky.Net Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 10:06 am

[...] At one time I had a tarred site still containing all its .svn directories. Needing to just start over and remove all .svn directories, I found the answer at Linux by Examples under the posting/page “Remove All .svn Directories at Once“. [...]

mysurface Says:
July 19th, 2007 at 5:24 pm

svn export might be good, but the example cater for those machines without svn installed.