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delete

GitHub Action

Delete old packages

v0.8.0 Latest version

Delete old packages

delete

Delete old packages

Deletes old package versions

Installation

Copy and paste the following snippet into your .yml file.

 
              
- name: Delete old packages

              
  uses: SmartsquareGmbH/delete-old-packages@v0.8.0
Learn more about this action in SmartsquareGmbH/delete-old-packages

Choose a version

Delete old packages

GitHub action for deleting old versions of packages in the GitHub package registry.

This is very similar to actions/delete-package-versions but targets a different use case.

The action works by getting a list of packages with at most the oldest 100 versions of each, applying the filters (see table below) on them and then deleting the matching versions.

If you have more than 100 versions and none of the 100 oldest versions match, no package versions will be deleted!

Inputs

Name Description Required Default
user User containing the package(s)
organization Organization containing the package(s)
names Names of the package(s) ✔️
type The type of package (e.g. npm) ✔️
semver-pattern Semver range of the versions
version-pattern Regex pattern of the versions ^.+$
keep Number of versions to exclude from deletions 2
token Token with the necessary scopes to delete package versions Depends on the package Set by GitHub
dry-run If the action should only print what it would do false

⚠️ Certain options can not be combined with each other and will lead to errors. These are:

  • user and organization.
  • semver-pattern and version-pattern.

Supported package types as of the current version are: npm, maven, rubygems, docker, nuget and container.

A token might be needed, based on which package you are trying to delete. Tokens can be generated here and need to be added as a secret to the repository (Settings -> Security -> Secrets and variables -> Actions).

Example usage

Delete old versions of the packages "package-1" and "package-2" for the organization "my-organization".

uses: smartsquaregmbh/delete-old-packages@v0.7.0
with:
  organization: my-organization
  type: npm
  names: |
    package-1
    package-2

Delete old versions in the form of "1.0.0-RC1" of the package "package".

uses: smartsquaregmbh/delete-old-packages@v0.7.0
with:
  organization: my-organization
  type: npm
  version-pattern: "^\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+-RC\\d+$" # The regex needs to be escaped!
  names: |
    package

Delete old versions with a lower semver version than 2.x of the package "package".

uses: smartsquaregmbh/delete-old-packages@v0.7.0
with:
  organization: my-organization
  type: npm
  semver-pattern: "<2.x"
  names: |
    package

Delete old versions of the package "package" but keep at least 5 versions.

uses: smartsquaregmbh/delete-old-packages@v0.7.0
with:
  organization: my-organization
  type: npm
  keep: 5
  names: |
    package

Delete old versions of the package "package" with a token named "GH_ACCESS_TOKEN".

uses: smartsquaregmbh/delete-old-packages@v0.7.0
with:
  token: ${{ secrets.GH_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
  organization: my-organization
  type: npm
  names: |
    package

Rate limit

GitHub imposes a rate limit on API calls which might be triggered by excessive use of this action. Starting from version v0.8.0 this should be automatically handled: The rate limit retry after returned from the GitHub api during a request is used to wait before retrying, up to five times. If the rate limit is exceeded more than five times, the action will still fail.