destroy

Remove all DVC files and internals 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 project.

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 have setup symlinks (from cache to workspace) in your project, DVC will replace them with the latest versions of the actual files and directories first, so that your data is intact after destruction.

Refer to Project Structure 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: Preserve an external cache directory

By default, the cache location is .dvc/cache. Let's change its location to /mnt/cache using dvc cache dir, add some data, and then try dvc destroy:

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

Contents of the workspace:

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

Contents of the (external) cache (b1/946a... contains foo):

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

OK, let's destroy the DVC project:

$ 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

foo.dvc and the internal .dvc/ directory were removed (this would include any cached data prior to changing the cache location). But the cache files in /mnt/cache persist:

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