dry-run.adoc

Dry run

Table of Contents

• Dry run
  • Only show total space savings
  • Show details about what would be deleted
  • Garbage creation prevention instructions
  • Dry run also detects errors in cleanup list file
    • Detecting wrong entity (file or directory) type

Dry run

Dry run allows you to preview how much space you would save if you run the cleaner.

Important

Dry run will not perform any cleaning.

Only show total space savings

To only show total amount of space which would be freed and total amount of registry keys which would be deleted, run:

pwsh .\constup-garbage-cleaner.ps1 -dryRun

The output will be something like this:

Dry run summary:
----------
Total space saved: 3 MB.
Total space which would be saved (in exact bytes): 3195650.
Total registry entries to delete: 0

Show details about what would be deleted

To show details about files, directories and registry keys which would be deleted, namely their description, type, location and size, run:

pwsh .\constup-garbage-cleaner.ps1 -dryRun -detailed

For each of the files, directories and registry entries which would be deleted, the information in detailed dry run will look like this:

some_obsolete_log
    Location: ~/temp/something.log
    Size: 1566850 bytes

At the end, the dry run will also list the total savings, just like in the non-detailed mode.

Garbage creation prevention instructions

If you run a detailed dry run (--dryRun --detailed), you will also get instructions on how to prevent further creation of garbage. These instructions are available for some cleaning rules, where it makes sense.

The result will look something like this:

===Helpful info===
Some useful information on how to prevent creation of garbage files which were found on your system:
----------
Rule name: scoop_cache
Location: ~/scoop/cache/*.*
Prevention instructions: Scoop does not support disabling cache in configuration. Use the `--no-cache` flag instead, when issuing commands. Example: `scoop update --all --no-cache`.

Important

You will only get these instructions for garbage that was detected on your system and which is relevant to you.

Dry run also detects errors in cleanup list file

Whether you start dry run in detailed or non-detailed mode, it will report some of the errors found in your cleanup list configuration file.

Detecting wrong entity (file or directory) type

When defining what to delete, apart from the location of the entity, you must specify whether it’s a file, directory, registry path or registry key.

Dry run (along with the -clean command), detects potential errors in entity types and writes them at the end of the report. Like this:

----------
Dry run summary:
----------
Total space saved: 3 MB.
Total space which would be saved (in exact bytes): 3195650.
Total registry entries to delete: 0
----------
Note: Size calculations do not take into account entries with errors.
The following errors were found in your cleanup list configuration file:
---
Error in test_file : W:\temp\cleanup\Console*1.cpp is a file, but is defined in your cleanup list as a directory.
Error in test_directory : W:\temp\cleanup\ConsoleApplication1 is a directory, but is defined in your cleanup list as a file.

You can then go to test_file and test_directory entries in your cleanup list configuration file and fix it.

Note	False positives can occur when using wildcards in the location string, which could define both files and directories. You can avoid these errors by being more precise when defining a location.