This is a tool to clean build output folders for (especially .net) MSBuild projects. It's also lame and quite s-s-s-slow.
Yes, you can use dotnet clean or msbuild /t:clean to clean build output from your solutions ... however, these tools ... well these
- don't clean old build targets (after migrating from net6.0 to net8.0, net6.0 output doesn't get cleaned)
- don't delete default publishing folders (which can be huge)
- dotnet clean can have limitations cleaning older framework-style projects
Yes, you can just use git/source control to nuke anything not under source control
- not all projects are under git/source control
- if the build output isn't below the repo, this doesn't work (dotnet\runtime)
Imagine you had a sln/csproj targeting net6.0, you have existing build output below /bin/Debug/net6.0, you switch to net8.0 ... happy days cleaning up the old build output.
What this tool does
- traverse directories looking for .sln
- process all configurations from the .sln
- invokes msbuild to evaluate the build output related properties from the project file per configuration (which is why this is so s-s-s-slow)
- enables you to delete only non-current build output (TagetFramework no longer in proj file)
- validates tfms for .net projects to make sure the correct stuff gets nuked
- by default doesn't delete, only dump stats and the command line to delete folders. Nothing gets touched unless you specify --delete
Upside:
- by default doesn't delete anything, just dumps statistics and rmdir /q /s ...
- confirmation configurable
msbuild.clean --root <rootDir> --depth 3 --parallel 24
| switch | |
|---|---|
| -v, --verbosity, --log | LogLevel (Debug,Verbose,Info,[Warning],Error) |
| --confirm | ConfirmLevel |
| --dry-run | [DEFAULT] do not delete, just dump stats and a list of folders to delete |
| --delete | delete folders/files after confirmation |
| --force | every tool needs an option --force |
| --delete-empty-directories | delete directory even if no files/subdirectories. |
| --delete-files | delete files instead of directories |
| --non-current | --noncurrent |
| --obj | [DEFAULT] also clean BaseIntermediateOutputPath |
| --msbuild | explicit path to MSbuild.exe or MSbuild.dll. By default, the tool tries to guess the correct MSBuild location, preferring Visual Studio installations |
| --root | root path or path to .sln |
| -np | --non-parallal |
| -p | --parallel |
| --depth | if root dir is directory, the depth to which the tool scans for .sln |
| path to sln or path to root dir can also be specified as last argument. If missing, current directory used |
msbuild getproperty pukes when it encounters an error during evaluation.