cactus

Finds build/, node_modules/, target/, and other cache directories across your repos, then deletes them -- but only if they're gitignored. If git doesn't say to ignore it, cactus won't touch it.

$ cactus ~/code
apps/dashboard
  node_modules  309.5 MiB
apps/backend
  build  12.2 MiB
  .gradle  986 KiB
libs/rust-core
  target  1.3 GiB
tools/cli
  node_modules  61.9 MiB

12 dirs, 1.7 GiB reclaimable
Purge? [y/N]

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/iamkaf/cactus

Usage

cactus <path>              # scan and prompt before deleting (default depth: 3)
cactus -L 5 <path>         # look deeper for repos
cactus -n <path>           # dry run, just list what it finds
cactus -y <path>           # skip the confirmation prompt

Flag	Short	Default	Description
--depth	-L	3	Max directory depth to search for repos
--dry-run	-n	off	Show what would be deleted without deleting
--yes	-y	off	Skip confirmation prompt

What it looks for

Directory	Language/tool
build/	Gradle, generic
.gradle/	Gradle
bin/, obj/	.NET, generic
node_modules/	Node.js
target/	Rust, Maven
__pycache__/	Python
.mypy_cache/, .pytest_cache/, .ruff_cache/, .tox/	Python tooling

How it works

1. Walks directories up to the specified depth looking for .git folders
2. Scans each repo in parallel using libgit2 (via git2) and rayon
3. Checks each candidate directory against the repo's .gitignore rules -- only gitignored directories are marked for deletion