Remove all git files from a directory?

I have a folder under version control. I want to make a copy of it to send around, but don't want to include all the .git directories and the files underneath it.

Is there a way to remove all the git files instead of manually deleting all of them?

Solution 1:

The .git folder is only stored in the root directory of the repo, not all the sub-directories like subversion. You should be able to just delete that one folder, unless you are using Submodules...then they will have one too.

Solution 2:

How to remove all .git directories under a folder in Linux.

Run this find command, it will list all .git directories under the current folder:

find . -type d -name ".git" \
&& find . -name ".gitignore" \
&& find . -name ".gitmodules"

Prints:

./.git
./.gitmodules
./foobar/.git
./footbar2/.git
./footbar2/.gitignore

There should only be like 3 or 4 .git directories because git only has one .git folder for every project. You can rm -rf yourpath each of the above by hand.

If you feel like removing them all in one command and living dangerously:

//Retrieve all the files named ".git" and pump them into 'rm -rf'
//WARNING if you don't understand why/how this command works, DO NOT run it!

( find . -type d -name ".git" \
  && find . -name ".gitignore" \
  && find . -name ".gitmodules" ) | xargs rm -rf

//WARNING, if you accidentally pipe a `.` or `/` or other wildcard
//into xargs rm -rf, then the next question you will have is: "why is
//the bash ls command not found?  Requiring an OS reinstall.