Apply Retention Policy

A command-line tool to apply retention policies to backup files. It helps manage disk space by automatically deleting old backup files while maintaining a specified number of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups.

This project began as an experiment in AI-assisted development but after a lot of frustrations with the tools, I have gone back to my normal flow.

Features

• Configurable retention periods (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)
• Flexible file pattern matching
• Dry run mode for safe testing
• Structured logging
• Docker support

Installation

Binary

Download the latest release from the releases page.

Docker

docker pull ghcr.io/totallynotrobots/apply-retention-policy:latest

Usage

1. Create a configuration file (see configs/example.yaml for an example):

retention:
  hourly: 24
  daily: 7
  weekly: 4
  monthly: 12
  yearly: 5

file_pattern: "backup-{year}-{month}-{day}-{hour}-{minute}.tar.gz"
directory: "/path/to/backups"
log_level: "info"
dry_run: false

2. Run the tool:

# Using binary
./apply-retention-policy prune --config config.yaml

# Using Docker
docker run -v /path/to/config.yaml:/config.yaml -v /path/to/backups:/backups \
  ghcr.io/totallynotrobots/apply-retention-policy:latest prune --config /config.yaml

Command-line Options

• --config, -c: Path to configuration file (default: $HOME/.apply-retention-policy.yaml)
• --dry-run, -d: Show what would be deleted without actually deleting
• --log-level, -l: Log level (debug, info, warn, error)

File Pattern

The file pattern supports the following placeholders:

• {year}: 4-digit year (e.g., 2024)
• {month}: 2-digit month (01-12)
• {day}: 2-digit day (01-31)
• {hour}: 2-digit hour (00-23)
• {minute}: 2-digit minute (00-59)

Example: backup-{year}-{month}-{day}-{hour}-{minute}.tar.gz

Development

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21 or later
• Bazel
• Docker (for building container images)

Building

# Build binary (using the root target)
bazel build //:apply-retention-policy

# Build multi-arch container image (using the root target)
bazel build //:image

Testing

bazel test //...

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details