Zc - a simple utility for deleting .zig-cache accross your system

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I just published zc, a small Zig utility to clean up .zig-cache directories recursively.

The main motivation was practical (Zig caches piling up across many repos), but I also used this project as a way to get more familiar with Zig’s new I/O interface and concurrency patterns. The tool walks the filesystem, queues work, and deletes targets in parallel while reporting progress and stats.

It’s intentionally simple:

  • one job
  • fast (but that’s entirely based on the std lol)
  • multithreaded (again thanks andrew)

You can run it on the current directory, point it at a workspace, dry-run it, or even repurpose it to clean other directories like node_modules.

Binaries are available in the releases, or it can be built from source with Zig master.

Feedback welcome, It’s also not tested on anything except my machine, I don’t think I’ve blundered badly, it won’t break your system, but still use it to your own detriment ahah.

Here is the output :

$ zc -d
Would delete ./workspace/zigcleaner_/.zig-cache
Would delete ./workspace/cean/cleanup/side-project/zig/test/standalone/windows_entry_points/.zig-cache
....
Would delete ./workspace/cean/cleanup/side-project/zig/test/standalone/ios/.zig-cache
Would delete ./workspace/cean/cleanup/side-project/zig/test/link/wasm/stack_pointer/.zig-cache

Statistics:
  Duration:    0.14s
  Directories: 178307 scanned
  Threads:     32 workers
  Potential Reclaim:   6.58 GB
  Throughput:  45.80 GB/s
  Peak RSS:    17.93 MB
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