Colin Bennett added a comment - 2016-01-22 23:43 - edited Workaround for "Clean Before Checkout" Equivalent I tried a few ways to get the equivalent of a Git Clean Before Checkout behavior in a Multibranch Pipeline job. Here is what is working for me now: using a manual call to git clean , falling back on deleteDir() pipeline statement if there is no existing Git repository in the workspace: node { gitClean() checkout scm /* ... rest of the build ... */ } /** * Clean a Git project workspace. * Uses 'git clean' if there is a repository found. * Uses Pipeline 'deleteDir()' function if no .git directory is found. */ def gitClean() { timeout(time: 60, unit: 'SECONDS' ) { if (fileExists( '.git' )) { echo 'Found Git repository: using Git to clean the tree.' // The sequence of reset --hard and clean -fdx first // in the root and then using submodule foreach // is based on how the Jenkins Git SCM clean before checkout // feature works. bat 'git reset --hard' // Note: -e is necessary to exclude the temp directory // .jenkins-XXXXX in the workspace where Pipeline puts the // batch file for the 'bat' command. bat 'git clean -ffdx -e ".jenkins-*/" ' bat 'git submodule foreach --recursive git reset --hard' bat 'git submodule foreach --recursive git clean -ffdx' } else { echo 'No Git repository found: using deleteDir() to wipe clean' deleteDir() } } }