older-than + keep-n-tagged options delete more recent images instead of the oldest ones

[artazar]

Hi,

This log snippet perfectly shows the issue:

2025-09-10T03:32:09.0599816Z ##[group][my-example-image] Finding images that are older than: 1 month
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0601005Z sha256:43bdd2f64fd430966238c3e980f09bdc6dedff6f46a0c45ea0e8c362abf61dd7 0.6,latest,main
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0601974Z sha256:a3aa8e3f75379020d878cc11b996e6e5b4dd09e5bbb0c200385fe4a1709371be 0.5
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0602828Z sha256:0760896afc6712824ac6bff15b668053a71b3c2a2d86c8c744922cf7a507465b 0.4
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0603948Z sha256:e00d58f303186665528783c2b10a66ec367bfec7615234c54bc1568e6f4eb8a2 0.3
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0604612Z sha256:46ed7460d788b7e28e13f11b05225178a9d19d094d7fca110cd38e082f7ad6b0 0.2
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0605277Z sha256:3edd1d747b95124c8aa991228dd38618ed68ee769c36d963385069cf9ef874c5 5471674518
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0605986Z sha256:e7ee86f75c7b8c38f765453747b51eaa92066b9dbc04b721651d5129a001ada8 5463244641
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0606839Z sha256:67d21033dc62baf111dd6a0c08ab98be790828c833ceeddc638b1ebbcf52e141 5286500783
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0607409Z ##[endgroup]
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0607799Z ##[group][my-example-image] Untagging images: 0.6
2025-09-10T03:32:09.0608118Z 0.6

Here's my action definition:

      - uses: dataaxiom/ghcr-cleanup-action@v1
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.TOKEN_RW }}
          packages: '(my-example-.*|my-first-repo/.*|my-second-repo/.*)'
          expand-packages: true
          keep-n-tagged: 5
          delete-tags: '^([0-9]*\.)*[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$'
          use-regex: true
          exclude-tags: develop, stage, main
          older-than: 1 month

I would expect the action to delete version 0.2 but not 0.6 as it's the latest one (and also tagged with "latest" and "main" tags).

Is it a sorting issue or should I use some different combination of settings to achieve that?

[rohanmars]

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Do you have a full log you could share?

[artazar]

Hi,

Sorry, I cannot share the full log.

Here's my expectation in simple words:

When I've got images tagged continuously as 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 and so on, and I use the github action configuration as:

          keep-n-tagged: 5
          delete-tags: '^([0-9]*\.)*[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$'

What I get after the action is run is the oldest tag (0.1) deleted (untagged), but not the latest one (0.6). But I observe the opposite, as if sorting should be reversed.

Is keep-n-tagged option supposed to untag the oldest versions first or is it my misunderstanding?

[rohanmars]

@artazar I think it's a problem with untagging, which is differently processed by the code. One of my last modifications was to make the delete-tags work with keep-n-tagged, but I don't it works with multi-tagged images. It's a bit more complicated due to the nature of untagging. Untagging is not actually deleting an image for example, in your case 0.6 tag was removed from the image, but the underlying image was still there.

ghcr-cleanup-action/src/cleanup-task.ts

Line 587 in 244b3e8

// first process untagging events - do a pre scan to check if in this mode

Let me do some research. It would be good to fix this scenario.

[artazar]

Yeah I understand that untagged image remains, but then I call this separately:

      - uses: dataaxiom/ghcr-cleanup-action@v1
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.TOKEN_RW }}
          delete-untagged: true
          older-than: 1 month

and untagged images are removed too.

Thank you for looking into this!

The alternative solution that would help in my particular case is some way to keep the most recent image untouched. It can be identified by modified date, by latest tag, by main tag.

2025-09-10T03:32:09.0601005Z sha256:43bdd2f64fd430966238c3e980f09bdc6dedff6f46a0c45ea0e8c362abf61dd7 0.6,latest,main

So if such an image is processed, it is skipped immediately.

But I haven't been able to find such an option, this doesn't help here too:

          exclude-tags: develop, stage, main

The combination of parameters is hard to handle.