GitHub - olzhasar/mess: A tiny CLI for removing development clutter · GitHub
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olzhasar
mess
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mess
mess deletes common temporary development files in your projects. It ships with common cleanup patterns for popular programming languages like caches, build artifacts, bytecode files, linters output, etc.
Why a separate tool instead of a bash script?
Reports reclaimed disk space
Easy to configure and override patterns
Simple and fast
Reduces the number of bash scripts in the world
Installation
Pre-built binaries
Download a ready-to-use pre-built binary for your platform (Linux and macOS are currently supported) in<br>GitHub releases.
Install with go
go install github.com/olzhasar/mess@latest
Building from source
make install
By default, this installs mess to ~/.local/bin. To install elsewhere, set<br>PREFIX:
make install PREFIX=/usr/local
Usage
CAUTION: this tool deletes files and directories from your filesystem!
While the pre-configured patterns should be safe for most users, please, read the patterns list first and ensure it fits your needs. See Patterns
Clean a directory
Clean a specific path (scans only direct children by default):
mess clean ~/my_projects
Scan subdirectories too:
mess clean -r ~/my_projects
Print each removed path:
mess clean -v ~/my_projects
Use custom patterns for one run. These replace the configured patterns:
mess clean -r -p "node_modules,*.pyc" ~/dev/lots-of-js/
Patterns
To display the currently configured patterns, run:
mess patterns
By default, mess uses its built-in PATTERNS. To override them you can use either use a -p flag or you can create one of these files:
~/.mess_patterns
/mess/patterns
The user config directory is provided by your operating system. On Linux it's $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (defaults to ~/.config), on Darwin - ~/Library/Application Support/
Pattern files use one pattern per line. Empty lines and lines starting with #<br>are ignored.
Patterns use a shell glob-style syntax.
Example:
# Python<br>*.pyc<br>__pycache__
# JavaScript<br>node_modules
# Specific path<br>foo/bar/
License
MIT
About
A tiny CLI for removing development clutter
Topics
cli
cache
disk-space
cleaner
disk-cleanup
tempfiles
Resources
Readme
License
MIT license
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Releases
v0.2.0
Latest
Jun 30, 2026
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Go<br>95.4%
Just<br>2.3%
Makefile<br>2.3%
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