search-and-destroy

Build files be gone! search-and-destroy is a CLI tool to clean up build files from all types of tech stacks. It’s like a Roomba for your project directory, but instead of dust, it sucks up those pesky node_modules/, build/, and *.egg-info/ folders.

Requirements

• Python 3.8+

Caution: It's strongly recommended to run sad with --dry-run first and add a .sadignore file to protect any files or folders you don't want removed.

Quick start

# Run search-and-destroy to remove build files
sad

# Examples
sad list
sad list node
sad --dry-run nuke node
sad --all --yes node
sad --dry-run python
sad --dry-run dotnet

Commands

• list [type] — Show project and build artifact names that would be removed for type (default: all).
• nuke [type1 type2 ...] — Recursively find and remove matching targets for the named project types (default: all). Use --dry-run to preview.
• node, python, dotnet etc. — Run the cleaner for a single project type.

Options (common): --dry-run, --yes, --all, --force, --safe.

Aliases available: search-and-destroy

License

• MIT

Ignoring paths with .sadignore

Create a file named .sadignore in the repository root to prevent sad from listing or removing paths that would otherwise match targets. The file follows gitignore-style patterns when the pathspec package is installed; otherwise a simple glob-based fallback is used.

Examples:

• Ignore a directory anywhere in the tree:

  ignorethis/ somedir/ignorethis

• Ignore a specific file:

  node_modules package-lock.json

• Anchor to repository root (requires pathspec for gitwildmatch semantics):

  /ignorethis/

• Negate a pattern (allow a subfolder):

  ignorethis/ !ignorethis/keep/

Run sad --dry-run to preview deletions; .sadignore entries are respected in the preview.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

2026.0.0

• Initial release as search-and-destroy.

2026.1.0

• Added animation to menu.

2026.1.1

• Added __init__.py to classes package to ensure it is included in the distribution.