Keeping Your Git Working Directories Clean

The Power and Messiness of Git

Git is the backbone of modern software development, providing a powerful way to track, manage, and collaborate on code. Whether you’re working solo on a passion project, contributing to open-source, or juggling multiple enterprise repositories, Git keeps everything versioned and organized. Like many developers, I use Git both at work and for personal projects. This site is developed using Git and hosted on github.com.

But let’s be honest—Git repositories can get messy. Old stashes, merged-but-forgotten branches, and lingering references accumulate, making it harder to navigate and manage your work efficiently.

To tackle this problem, I built git-cleanup, a lightweight bash script designed to keep your repositories neat and clutter-free. It automates the removal of outdated references, so you can focus on writing great code instead of cleaning up after yourself.

Why Git Repositories Get Messy

Over time, repositories accumulate digital debris that can slow you down. Here’s what typically happens:

Forgotten Stashes: Stashed changes often get left behind, creating unnecessary clutter.
Merged but Undeleted Branches: Once a branch is merged, it’s easy to forget about it.
Detached References: Temporary commit references linger longer than they should.
Multiple Repositories: If you manage multiple projects, keeping everything tidy can be overwhelming.

If you’re like me, all your repositories probably live in a single projects directory, and manually cleaning them up is not how you want to spend your time.

Automating the Cleanup Process

The git-cleanup script automates this tedious process by removing unnecessary references in your Git repositories. It will:

Fetch updates from remote repositories and prunes any remote-tracking references that no longer exist on the remote.
Remove local branches that have been deleted on the remote.
Remove local branches that have been merged into the main branch.
Prune orphaned objects from the local repository.
Check for old stashes and notifies if any are found.
Optionally removes any untracked branches.

How to Use It

You can run the script with the following options:

Usage: ./git_cleanup.sh [-d directory] [-u]

-d directory: Specify the directory to clean up. Defaults to the current directory (.).
-u: Removes untracked branches.

If the specified directory contains a .git file, the script will clean up just that directory. This is useful when working in a specific project and you notice things have gotten unwieldy. Otherwise, the script will recurse into child directories to find and clean up any Git repositories.

Making it easier with an Alias

Since I run this cleanup regularly, I made it even simpler with a shell alias. Adding this to your .bashrc or .zshrc file saves even more time:

alias cleanup="sh $PROJECTS/git-cleanup/git_cleanup.sh -d $PROJECTS"

The $PROJECTS is an environment variable that I have set to the directory containing all my projects. This alias will run the git_cleanup.sh script from its checked-out location against the directory specified by $PROJECTS.

Now, cleaning all repositories is just one command away:

> cleanup

I know many developers have their own Git cleanup scripts, but I wanted to share mine in a structured, reusable format. *git-cleanup** is open-source, free to use, and available for anyone to enhance.

If you find it useful, give it a try and let me know how it works for you. You can also contribute improvements or suggestions on the git-cleanup repository.

Keeping your Git environment clean doesn’t have to be a hassle. Automate it once, and spend more time writing code instead of managing clutter.

Happy coding!

The Aging Developer