I work with multiple projects, and I want to recursively delete all folders with the name 'bin' or 'obj' that way I am sure that all projects will rebuild everything (sometimes it's the only way to force Visual Studio to forget all about previous builds).
Is there a quick way to accomplish this (with a .bat file for example) without having to write a .NET program?
This depends on the shell you prefer to use.
If you are using the cmd shell on Windows then the following should work:
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S bin') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%G"
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S obj') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%%G"
If you are using a bash or zsh type shell (such as git bash or babun on Windows or most Linux / OS X shells) then this is a much nicer, more succinct way to do what you want:
find . -iname "bin" | xargs rm -rf
find . -iname "obj" | xargs rm -rf
and this can be reduced to one line with an OR:
find . -iname "bin" -o -iname "obj" | xargs rm -rf
Note that if your directories of filenames contain spaces or quotes, find will send those entries as-is, which xargs may split into multiple entries. If your shell supports them, -print0 and -0 will work around this short-coming, so the above examples become:
find . -iname "bin" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
find . -iname "obj" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
and:
find . -iname "bin" -o -iname "obj" -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
If you are using Powershell then you can use this:
Get-ChildItem .\ -include bin,obj -Recurse | foreach ($_) { remove-item $_.fullname -Force -Recurse }
as seen in Robert H's answer below - just make sure you give him credit for the powershell answer rather than me if you choose to up-vote anything :)
It would of course be wise to run whatever command you choose somewhere safe first to test it!
I use to always add a new target on my solutions for achieving this.
<Target Name="clean_folders">
<RemoveDir Directories=".\ProjectName\bin" />
<RemoveDir Directories=".\ProjectName\obj" />
<RemoveDir Directories="$(ProjectVarName)\bin" />
<RemoveDir Directories="$(ProjectVarName)\obj" />
</Target>
And you can call it from command line
msbuild /t:clean_folders
This can be your batch file.
msbuild /t:clean_folders
PAUSE
A very quick and painless way is to use the rimraf npm utility, install it globally first:
> npm i rimraf -g
And then the command from your project root is quite simple (which can be saved to a script file):
projectRoot> rimraf **/bin **/obj
To optimize the desired effect you can leverage the project event targets (the one you could use is BeforeRebuild and make it run the previous command) which are specified in the docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/msbuild/how-to-extend-the-visual-studio-build-process?view=vs-2017
I like the rimraf utility as it is crossplat and really quick. But, you can also use the RemoveDir command in the .csproj if you decide to go with the target event option. The RemoveDir approach was well explained in another answer here by @Shaman: https://stackoverflow.com/a/22306653/1534753
I use a slight modification of Robert H which skips errors and prints the delete files. I usally also clear the .vs, _resharper and package folders:
Get-ChildItem -include bin,obj,packages,'_ReSharper.Caches','.vs' -Force -Recurse | foreach ($_) { remove-item $_.fullname -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Verbose}
Also worth to note is the git command which clears all changes inclusive ignored files and directories:
git clean -dfx
In VS 2019/VS 2022 this is the only sane solution.
In the solution folder (where the .sln file is located), create a file called Directory.Build.props and add edit it as shown below. Read about this special file here.
<Project>
<Target Name="RemoveObjAndBinFolders" AfterTargets="Clean">
<PropertyGroup>
<ObjFolder>$(ProjectDir)$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath)</ObjFolder>
<BinFolder>$(ProjectDir)$(BaseOutputPath)</BinFolder>
<!-- Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web sets $(BaseIntermediateOutputPath) to -->
<!-- an absolute path. Not fixed up to MsBuild 17! -->
<BaseIntermediateOutputPathFix Condition="$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath.StartsWith($(MSBuildProjectDirectory)))">$([MSBuild]::MakeRelative(
$(ProjectDir),
$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath)
))</BaseIntermediateOutputPathFix>
<ObjFolder Condition="$(BaseIntermediateOutputPath.StartsWith($(MSBuildProjectDirectory)))">$(ProjectDir)$(BaseIntermediateOutputPathFix)</ObjFolder>
</PropertyGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<ObjFiles Include="$(ObjFolder)/*.*"
Exclude="$(ObjFolder)/project.assets.json" />
<ObjSubFolders
Include="$([System.IO.Directory]::GetDirectories('$(ObjFolder)'))" />
</ItemGroup>
<!-- Remove "obj" sub folders -->
<RemoveDir Directories="@(ObjSubFolders)" ContinueOnError="true" />
<!-- Remove "obj" files (keeping necessary asset file)-->
<Delete Files="@(ObjFiles)" />
<!-- Remove "bin" folders -->
<RemoveDir Directories="$(BinFolder)" ContinueOnError="true" />
</Target>
</Project>
No need to modify a bunch of .csproj files. Also, note that I'm not removing $(TargetDir) as some have suggested. Doing so might cripple the build system if $(OutDir) has been set to some custom directory (a common thing to do).
Several solutions above give answers how to exclude folders, but not in cmd. Expanding on Steve Willcock's answer, to exclude e.g. the node_modules folder, that may have bin folders in it, one can use the expanded one-liner below.
FOR /F "tokens=*" %G IN ('DIR /B /AD /S bin obj ^|find ^"node_modules^" /v /i') DO RMDIR /S /Q "%G"
As noted by others, in the case of putting the above command in a cmd script and not using it directly in the command line, substitute %G with %%G.
Is 'clean' not good enough? Note that you can call msbuild with /t:clean from the command-line.
On our build server, we explicitly delete the bin and obj directories, via nant scripts.
Each project build script is responsible for it's output/temp directories. Works nicely that way. So when we change a project and add a new one, we base the script off a working script, and you notice the delete stage and take care of it.
If you doing it on you logic development machine, I'd stick to clean via Visual Studio as others have mentioned.
I actually hate obj files littering the source trees. I usually setup projects so that they output obj files outside source tree. For C# projects I usually use
<IntermediateOutputPath>..\..\obj\$(AssemblyName)\$(Configuration)\</IntermediateOutputPath>
For C++ projects
IntermediateDirectory="..\..\obj\$(ProjectName)\$(ConfigurationName)"
Command line tool that finds Visual Studio solutions and runs the Clean command on them. This lets you clean up the /bin/* directories of all those old projects you have lying around on your harddrive
You could actually take the PS suggestion a little further and create a vbs file in the project directory like this:
Option Explicit
Dim oShell, appCmd
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
appCmd = "powershell -noexit Get-ChildItem .\ -include bin,obj -Recurse | foreach ($_) { remove-item $_.fullname -Force -Recurse -WhatIf }"
oShell.Run appCmd, 4, false
For safety, I have included -WhatIf parameter, so remove it if you are satisfied with the list on the first run.
We have a large .SLN files with many project files. I started the policy of having a "ViewLocal" directory where all non-sourcecontrolled files are located. Inside that directory is an 'Inter' and an 'Out' directory. For the intermediate files, and the output files, respectively.
This obviously makes it easy to just go to your 'viewlocal' directory and do a simple delete, to get rid of everything.
Before you spent time figuring out a way to work around this with scripts, you might think about setting up something similar.
I won't lie though, maintaining such a setup in a large organization has proved....interesting. Especially when you use technologies such as QT that like to process files and create non-sourcecontrolled source files. But that is a whole OTHER story!
For the solution in batch. I am using the following command:
FOR /D /R %%G in (obj,bin) DO @IF EXIST %%G IF %%~aG geq d RMDIR /S /Q "%%G"
The reason not using DIR /S /AD /B xxx
1. DIR /S /AD /B obj will return empty list (at least on my Windows10)
2. DIR /S /AD /B *obj will contain the result which is not expected (tobj folder)
This Works Fine For Me: start for /d /r . %%d in (bin,obj, ClientBin,Generated_Code) do @if exist "%%d" rd /s /q "%%d"
I use .bat file with this commad to do that.
for /f %%F in ('dir /b /ad /s ^| findstr /iles "Bin"') do RMDIR /s /q "%%F"
for /f %%F in ('dir /b /ad /s ^| findstr /iles "Obj"') do RMDIR /s /q "%%F"
I think you can right click to your solution/project and click "Clean" button.
As far as I remember it was working like that. I don't have my VS.NET with me now so can't test it.