How to clean Rust target/ folders

Every Rust project keeps debug, release and incremental build artifacts in target/, compiled per profile and per toolchain. Across a few old projects that is easily tens of GB. Cargo never cleans it for you.

Find the biggest target folders

du -sh ~/code/*/target 2>/dev/null | sort -hr | head

Get-ChildItem $HOME\code -Directory | ForEach-Object { $t = Join-Path $_.FullName "target"; if (Test-Path $t) { "{0,8:N1} GB  {1}" -f ((Get-ChildItem $t -Recurse -File | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum / 1GB), $_.Name } }

Replace ~/code with wherever your projects live.

Clean one project

cargo clean             # whole target/
cargo clean --release   # release artifacts only
cargo clean --doc       # generated docs only

Only build output goes. Your source and Cargo.lock stay. The next build is a full rebuild.

Trim instead of wiping

cargo install cargo-sweep
cargo sweep --time 30    # artifacts not used in 30 days
cargo sweep --installed  # artifacts from toolchains you no longer have

cargo-sweep is a third-party tool. Run it inside a project, or pass -r to walk a folder of projects.

The ~/.cargo registry

Downloaded crates live in ~/.cargo/registry (%USERPROFILE%\.cargo\registry on Windows). Since Cargo 1.88, Cargo deletes downloaded crate files it has not used in 3 months on its own. This automatic cleanup does not cover target/.

Measure with devdisk

devdisk is a free, read-only scanner. It finds every target/ that sits next to a Cargo.toml and lists it under Safe to regenerate, and lists ~/.cargo/registry under Review first. It never deletes anything; it only shows sizes and writes a cleanup script you read and run yourself.

curl -fsSLO https://disk.sadana.app/devdisk.py && python3 devdisk.py

iwr https://disk.sadana.app/devdisk.py -OutFile devdisk.py; py devdisk.py

Run free scannerSample report

FAQ

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