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Removing packages from the repository

The repoman-cli rm command allows you remove packages from the repository, either singly or in groups.

By default and with no flags, repoman-cli rm will remove out every package in every distribution, component and architecture that the repo currently is configured to serve, but multiple layers of confirmation will prevent you from doing that, and you can narrow down the list of packages to be deleted by means of the following flags:

  • -p or --package will only remove packages with a name matching the one given
  • -w or --wildcard will make the name given in the -p flag a wildcard match, ie. -p test will return packages named both "test" and "testamundo" and "testacular" if they exist
  • -d or --distribution will only remove packages belonging to the specified distribution
  • -c or --component will only remove packages belonging to the specified component
  • -a or --architecture will only remove packages belonging to the specified architecture
  • -v or --version will only remove packages with a version matching the one given
  • -r or --exclude-recent will exclude the N newest packages (by debian version sorting order) by distribution/component/architecture from the list of packages to be deleted
  • -l or --exclude-latest will exclude the most recent package; this is equivalent to --recent 1
  • -H or --rm-hidden will include packages belonging to distributions/components/architectures that have been deleted from the repo configuration; by default these are ignored
  • --publish will publish the repository to S3 after a successful rm action

Flags that take an argument can be specified multiple times and are ORed internally when making the query: repoman-cli query -d xenial -d trusty will remove the entire list of packages for both the trusty and xenial distributions for example.

Adding multiple flags of different types is an AND operation internally, for example repoman-cli rm -c main -c universal -p testdeb -v 2:0.0.0-test will remove only packages with the name "testdeb" and the version "1:0.0.0" in either the "main" or "universal" components:

$ repoman-cli rm -p testdeb -c main -c nightly -v 2:0.0.0-test

name     distribution    component    architecture    version
-------  --------------  -----------  --------------  ------------
testdeb  xenial          main         all             2:0.0.0-test
testdeb  xenial          nightly      all             2:0.0.0-test

WARNING:repoman.cli:Total packages to be deleted: 2

Adding the -y or --confirm flag will skip the confirmation step; obviously only do this if you are extremely confident in what you are doing!

Adding the --publish flag will cause the respository to be published to S3 automatically after all packages specified are successfully removed.

Automatic purging of old package versions

Because Repoman allow for multiple versions of a package to be published at the same time (relative to distribution/component/architecture), it is common especially in situations where automated CI/CD systems build new packages on the fly for dozens or even hundreds of versions of any given package to be "live" in the repo all at once. And unfortunatly, this can slow many common operations down: notably publishing the repo and running apt-get update on a client machine are both operations that take linear amount of time relative to the total size of the repository.

There are two ways to deal with this issue:

  1. Use the repoman-cli rm command on a regular schedule to purge out old package versions.

Repoman's rm command takes two flags that can automate the common cases here:

  • -r or --exclude-recent lets you set the N most recent versions to exclude from the list of packages to be deleted.
  • -l or --exclude-latest will cause repoman-cli rm to exclude the most recent package versions (by debian package sorting order) from the list of packages to be deleted: this is equivalent to --exclude-recent 1

For example, to purge all but the 2 most recent versions of every package in the "main" component of the "xenial" distribution, you would run:

$ repoman-cli rm -d xenial -c main --exclude-recent 2

To purge all but the two most recent versions of every package (relative to distribution/component/architecture) you would simply run:

$ repoman-cli rm --exclude-recent 2
  1. Use the --auto-purge flag or config file variable.

Alternatively, Repoman offers the ability to automatically purge old versions of packages when adding new packages to the repo or when copying them within the repository, using the --auto-purge flag. (Again this is always relative to the dist/comp/arch of the packages in question!)

For example, if you had 5 versions of the "testdeb" package in the "main" component of the "trusty" distribution and you had just built version 6, and wished to dispense with versions 1 through 4, you could run:

repoman-cli --auto-purge=2 add -d trusty -c main testdeb_6_all.deb

And when you copied that package into the "xenial" distribution, you could purge out the old versions there:

repoman-cli --auto-purge=2 copy --src-dist trusty \
    --src-comp main \
    --dst-dist xenial \
    --latest \
    -p testdeb

The result would be:

$ repoman-cli query -p testdeb

name     distribution    component    architecture    version
-------  --------------  -----------  --------------  -------------
testdeb  trusty          main         all             5
testdeb  trusty          main         all             6
testdeb  xenial          main         all             5
testdeb  xenial          main         all             6

NOTE: the --auto-purge flag is a top-level flag so that it can also be put into your repoman configuration file. This means that it comes before the command: repoman-cli --auto-purge=N copy not repoman-cli copy --auto-purge N