Hi; I just reduced QEMU's storage usage on gitlab by 130GB (no typo!)
using https://gitlab.com/eskultety/gitlab_cleaner, which Dan helpfully
pointed me at. This script removes old pipelines, which take up a
lot of storage space for QEMU because they include the stdout logs
for all the CI jobs in the pipeline. (Gitlab doesn't expire these,
either by default or configurably -- you have to either manually delete
the pipeline in the UI or else use the API, as this script does.)
I somewhat conservatively only blew away pipelines from before the
1st January 2022. I feel like we don't really even need 6 months worth
of CI job logs, though -- any views on whether we should be pruning
them more aggressively ?
My finger in the air says "more than a month, less than a year."
It can often take a while to notice problems, especially non fatal ones. If we had a one month retention we'd likely find we'd need older logs fairly often. If we expire after a year, we'd never wish we hadn't. Nearly all problems CI would be helpful to address are found in that time.
Usually, in other project, almost all issues like this are fixed within a couple months (often much sooner). That suggests that 4-6 months likely is the right balance with my personal bias to 6 months unless there is significant financial or other savings from 4 months.
Warner