With the DevOps pipeline maturing and deployment of multiple containers for multiple micro-services taking place, it became evident quite quickly that space is running out and a cleaning strategy is needed.

One way to do this is to clean the repository from images that are older than a set number of days, say, 5 days.

I am using the Bluemix Container registry so bx cr can simply be replaced with docker.

In the pipeline, use:

sh '''
    timestamp=$(date +%s -d "5 day ago")
    bx cr images --format "{{if ge $timestamp .Created}}{{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}}{{end}}" | xargs -r bx cr image-rm
'''

I use the above snippet after I have successfully built the Docker container image > pushed it to the registry and updated the image (in my case, in the Kubernetes cluster).

So, I first save in a shell variable the date value of 5 days ago. Then, using the Go format command (Docker uses Go templates) I iterate through the image repositories and compare the repository creation date with the value in $timestamp. Once it is “5 days old, or more” I delete it.

The enclosed {{.Repository}}:{{.Tag}} is important. It makes the image name and tag values available for the piped command that follows it.

xargs -r ensures the piped command will not execute if no result is passed to it (e.g., no images are >= 5 days old).

For production scenario you may want to ensure you images quota is big, so you could store images for cases where you might need to rollback, and adjust the script accordingly, or possibly also use your own storage solution for Docker container images such as jFrog Artifactory or Nexus Repository, etc.

Additionally, I also docker rmi 0.0.$BUILD_NUMBER the Docker container image that I build at the very beginning of the deployment stage of the pipeline as the image is pushed to the registry, and so there is no need to store it twice: in the build machine and in the registry.