Recursively delete .svn directories

abstract

This is a simple example of a unix command, which recursively deletes subversion .svn folders. Subversion is a well-spread open-source revision control application. Every copy of source code received from subversion repository has .svn folders, which store metadata. However, if you want to use or distribute source code, these .svn folder are often not necessary.

compatible

Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Cygwin...
Nearly any unix-compatible system with rm and find

We use find command to find all .svn folders beginning from current directory.

$ find . -type d -name .svn
./.svn
./sourceA/.svn
./sourceB/.svn
./sourceB/module/.svn
./sourceC/.svn

It is possible to pass these directories directly to rm command, using grave accent quotes (key to left of '1')

$ rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

So, this will remove every .svn folder beginning from current directory.

#!/bin/sh
echo "recursively removing .svn folders from"
pwd
rm -rf `find . -type d -name .svn`

You may save this script to /usr/bin/csvn (or other binary folder included in path) and use later to get 'clean' project source without typing lengthy commands.

For example,

$ svn checkout svn://server.com/svn/project
A    project/index.php
A    project/sourceA/a.php
A    project/sourceA/a1.php
A    project/sourceA/a2.php
A    project/sourceB/b.php
A    project/sourceB/module/lib.php
A    project/sourceC/c.php
Checked out revision 15.
$ cd project
$ csvn
recursively removing .svn folders from
/Users/anyexample/Source/project

warning

Always check you current working directory before calling 'csvn'.
It's not recommended to run 'csvn' as root

tested by AnyExample.com on 2006-12-02

Mac OS X 10.4.8
Ubuntu 6.10

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