Github Actions: keep artifacts only for the latest build on each branch

Question

I'm using Github Actions to build my project and upload artifacts to Github with the following part of workflow:

- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
  with:
    name: some-file
    path: some-path

Problem is that artifacts are quite big and consume available storage quota quickly. And also I don't even need all of them, just ones from the latest build on each branch.

Setting up retention period is not a solution because it will also delete artifacts from the latest build.

Answer 1

You can use Artifacts API for this.

First you should get a list of all your artifacts:

GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/artifacts

You'll need to adjust artifact's name to include the branch name, because there is no info about it in the response object.

Then filter through them, get the old ones and delete them:

DELETE /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/artifacts/{artifact_id}

This step should be run probably before you upload your new one. But that is up to you, what strategy you use ?

Here's a simple example using octokit:

jobs:
  doit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Create some file to upload
        run: echo "test" > test.txt
        
      - name: Store artifact's name
        id: artifact-name
        env:
          REF: ${{ github.ref }}
        run: echo "::set-output name=value::${REF////-}-test"

      - name: List, filter and delete artifacts
        uses: actions/github-script@v4
        id: artifact
        with:
          script: |
            const { owner, repo } = context.issue
            
            const res = await github.actions.listArtifactsForRepo({
              owner,
              repo,
            })
            
            res.data.artifacts
              .filter(({ name }) => name === '${{ steps.artifact-name.outputs.value }}')
              .forEach(({ id }) => {
                github.actions.deleteArtifact({
                  owner,
                  repo,
                  artifact_id: id,
                })
              })

      - name: Upload latest artifact
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v2
        with:
          name: ${{ steps.artifact-name.outputs.value }}
          path: test.txt