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 at most 20 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 packages will be deleted!

Inputs

Name	Description	Required	Default
user	User containing the package(s)
organization	Organization containing the package(s)
type	The type of package (e.g. npm)	✔️
package-pattern	Regex pattern of the packages	✔️	N\A
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
rate-limit	If rate limiting should be enabled		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 "journeyapps-platform".

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  package-pattern: "package-(1|2)"

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

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  version-pattern: "^\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+-RC\\d+$" # The regex needs to be escaped!
  package-pattern: "package"

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

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  semver-pattern: "<2.x"
  package-pattern: "package"

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

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  keep: 5
  package-pattern: "package"

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

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  token: ${{ secrets.GH_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  package-pattern: "package"

Rate limit

When using this action with many packages and/or versions you might encounter an error like "API rate limit exceeded". Internally, the action uses a plugin for octokit which automatically retries requests when the rate limit is exceeded. In these cases, 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 fail.

uses: journeyapps-platform/[email protected]
with:
  type: npm
  organization: journeyapps-platform
  rate-limit: true
  keep: 5
  package-pattern: "package"