destroy

Remove all DVC files and directories from a DVC project.

Synopsis

usage: dvc destroy [-h] [-q | -v] [-f]

Description

dvc destroy removes dvc.yaml, .dvc files, and the internal .dvc/ directory from the workspace.

Note that the cache directory will be removed as well, unless it's set to an external location (by default a local cache is located in .dvc/cache). If you were using symlinks for linking data from the cache, DVC will replace them with the latest versions of the actual files and directories first, so that your data is intact after the project's destruction.

Refer to DVC files and directories for more details on the directories and files deleted by this command.

Options

-f, --force - do not prompt when destroying this project.
-h, --help - prints the usage/help message, and exit.
-q, --quiet - do not write anything to standard output. Exit with 0 if no problems arise, otherwise 1.
-v, --verbose - displays detailed tracing information.

Examples

$ dvc init
$ echo foo > foo
$ dvc add foo
$ ls -a

.dvc .git code.py foo foo.dvc

$ dvc destroy
This will destroy all information about your pipelines, all data files...
Are you sure you want to continue?
yes

$ ls -a

.git code.py foo

Example: External cache directory

By default, the cache location is .dvc/cache. Let's change the cache location to /mnt/cache and then execute dvc destroy command:

$ dvc init
$ echo foo > foo
$ dvc cache dir /mnt/cache
$ dvc add foo

dvc cache dir changed the location of the cache directory to an external location. Content of workspace:

$ ls -a
.dvc .git code.py foo foo.dvc

Content of /mnt/cache directory:

$ tree /mnt/cache
/mnt/cache/
└── b1
    └── 946ac92492d2347c6235b4d2611184

Let's execute dvc destroy:

$ dvc destroy

This will destroy all information about your pipelines, all data files...
Are you sure you want to continue? [y/n]
yes

$ ls -a
.git code.py foo

dvc destroy command removed DVC-files, and the internal .dvc/ directory from the workspace. But the cache files that are present in the /mnt/cache directory still persist:

$ tree /mnt/cache
/mnt/cache/
└── b1
    └── 946ac92492d2347c6235b4d2611184