CLEAN-OLD-DISTFILES(1)

🧹 clean-old-distfiles(1) — General Commands Manual energy ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because this little cutie from the General Commands Manual section is genuinely one of the most underrated tools in the ports world and I need you to appreciate her 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

clean-old-distfiles — she removes obsolete ports distfiles, and she does it flawlessly, no cap 🗑️✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

clean-old-distfiles [-mnvx] [-e except] [-h history] [timestamp]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so here's the lore, bestie 📖 — every single time dpb(1) gets run for a full scan of the ports(7) tree, it appends to the history log. That log is literally just a list of files sitting in the distfiles directory that are not, or are no longer, needed for building the complete tree. iconic behaviour honestly.

and listen — you can also run it solely for that purpose, just for the log, using this:

$ dpb -D HISTORY_ONLY

then, when you run clean-old-distfiles later? she reads all that info from the history log and deletes the unneeded files for you 🫶. and the way she's so tidy — when a file gets deleted, the corresponding entry is also deleted from the history log. no crumbs left behind, periodt.

by default, clean-old-distfiles deletes all the files listed in the history log. all of them. full send 🚀

if you give her a timestamp, she interprets it as a number of seconds since the Epoch — similar to the date(1) -r argument — and then only deletes those files that were recorded as obsolete at that time or earlier. she can also take a date in ISO8601 format, like ‘2023-07-01’ or ‘2023-07-02T12:00:00Z’ 📅✨

for normal files, clean-old-distfiles verifies sha256(1) checksums prior to removal — she checks before she wrecks, iykyk 🔍. she also removes links under by_cipher/sha256, but for those she just trusts that the checksums are accurate. (yes bestie, that's the vibe, we move 💀)

options are as follows, and I'm obsessed with every single one of them:

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -e except — read the exception list from file except. each line is the name of a file that shouldn't be removed 🙅‍♀️ protect your faves.
• -h history — read the log from history file history instead of the default /usr/ports/distfiles/history. heads up though: this also turns on -nv, because this is a testing option 🧪.
• -m — causes clean-old-distfiles to display the progress meter even if not on a terminal. she's showing off regardless 💁‍♀️
• -n — don't really remove files. look but don't touch, bestie 👀
• -v — display what will be removed, as ‘rm file’ lines. narration! we love a running commentary 🗣️
• -x — causes clean-old-distfiles to not display the progress meter. for when you want her to be quiet 🤫

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🌈 FILES 🌈

• /usr/ports — base of the ports tree, can be overridden with env variable PORTSDIR 🌳
• /usr/ports/distfiles — location of the distfiles repository, can be overridden with env variable DISTDIR 📦
• /usr/ports/distfiles/history — log of obsolete distfiles 📜

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

dpb(1), sha256(1), mirroring-ports(7) — go read these too, they're all part of the same friend group 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this Debian edition is dated July 6, 2023 — go forth and clean responsibly, mwah 💋✨