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Accepted
Brian Lacy
Asked: 2010-10-27 10:28:21 +0800 CST

Linux & SVN: How to remove all versioned files but KEEP directory structure, ignore .svn dirs?

  • 772

I want to remove all the versioned files from my repository, but KEEP the versioned directory structure. Obviously I want to leave all the .svn directories untouched.

In other words, I want to completely empty a working copy's directory structure WITHOUT harming the directory structure itself.

For example, removing the files from this structure:

dir/
    .svn/
        [files]
    svsubdir1/
        file1
        .svn/
            [files]
    subdir2/
        file2
        file3
        file4
        .svn/
            [files]
        subsubdir1/
            file5
            .svn/
                [files]

Should result in:

dir/
    .svn/
        [files]
    svsubdir1/
        .svn/
            [files]
    subdir2/
        .svn/
            [files]
        subsubdir1/
            .svn/
                [files]

I'm looking for some sort of find command or something to accomplish this, and I'm having trouble constructing the command. Thanks for the help!

linux svn find recursive

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer
    find dir/ -path '*/.svn' -prune -o -type f -print

    should fit the bill (mostly comes from the find manpage for -path). Pipe it to less and check it out. What it does is first find (path ends in .svn and don't recurse into (prune) this directory) or (if it's a file, print it).

    If it looks good, change it to

    find dir/ -path '*/.svn' -prune -o -type f -exec rm {} +

    The + version sticks all of the files together into one rm command. If you're paranoid, keep a backup of the tree (cp -a dir/ otherdir/) first.

    • 10 
  2. find . -not -path "*/.svn/*" -and -type f -and -exec /bin/rm '{}' \;

    Ought to do the trick.

    • 2