overthinkos/clean

charly clean -- Build-artifact retention + cleanup

Overview

charly clean reclaims disk by applying the project's configured retention to reusable build artifacts and removing one-time transient leftovers. It is the on-demand counterpart to the auto-pruning that runs after charly box build and charly check run.

charly clean is an external COMMAND-class plugin (candy/plugin-clean, command:clean) — one of cutover C15's four remaining welded-command externalizations (after tmux/preempt/feature/vm/doctor). The user-facing command is unchanged; only its CLI registration moved out-of-process. The plugin is a THIN forwarder: charly resolves the clean word via the discovered (or /usr/lib/charly/plugins-baked) plugin and syscall.Exec's it in CLI mode, which raw-forwards the args to the hidden in-core charly __clean command. The CleanCmd.Run handler STAYS core (charly/clean.go) because it reads the project charly.yml defaults: (keep_images / keep_check_runs), resolves the build engine (ResolveRuntime), and prunes .build/ / .check/ artifacts + charly-labeled podman image tags — project + engine + filesystem machinery an out-of-process plugin cannot reach.

Two artifact classes, two policies (operator principle):

• One-time / transient → always cleaned immediately. makepkg leftovers under pkg/arch (src/, pkg/, *.pkg.tar.zst, *.log). task build:charly removes these right after install; charly clean sweeps any backlog.
• Reusable → keep-last-N, configurable in defaults:. Container image tags and .check run output. Retention is set in charly.yml defaults: and applied automatically at creation; charly clean applies it on demand.

Config (charly.yml defaults:)

defaults:
  keep_images: 3      # newest CalVer tags to keep per image after `charly box build`
  keep_check_runs: 3   # newest run dirs to keep per bed/score after `charly check run`

0 (or absent → built-in fallback 0) disables that retention. The repo opts in; third-party configs get no surprise pruning until they set a value.

Commands

charly clean              # apply retention now: prune images + check runs + makepkg leftovers
charly clean --dry-run    # print everything that WOULD be removed; touch nothing
charly clean --images     # only image-tag retention
charly clean --check       # only check-run retention
charly clean --keep N     # override the retention count for this run (0 = use defaults:)
charly clean --invalidate '<glob>'   # remove charly-labeled image tags matching the glob
                                     # (full ref or last segment; in-use skipped; runs ONLY this)

With neither --images nor --check, all three categories run (images + check + makepkg). --keep N overrides both counts for the invocation.

What gets pruned (and what never does)

Image-tag retention (keep_images): images are grouped by the ai.opencharly.box label and ordered by the ai.opencharly.version CalVer label; all but the newest N per group are podman rmi'd. Safety: any image referenced by a container (podman ps -a, including stopped/quadlet deploys) is skipped, and rmi runs WITHOUT -f so the engine refuses any still-referenced image as a backstop. Non-charly images (no ai.opencharly.box label) and images with an unparseable version are never touched.

Check-run retention (keep_check_runs): each .check/<bed|score>/ dir is trimmed to the newest N run artifacts — CalVer-named run dirs (bed runs), runs/<id>/ dirs (score iterations), and result-<calver>.yml files. NOTES.md is ALWAYS preserved (it's the durable Syncthing-replicated harness memory), as is any other non-run file.

makepkg sweep: removes pkg/arch/{src,pkg,*.pkg.tar.zst,*.log} (the package is already installed via pacman — pure transient waste).

--dry-run is best-effort: it lists prune candidates but cannot see "external" build containers (buildah intermediates podman ps -a doesn't list), so an image held by one is listed yet safely skipped at removal time (the rmi backstop refuses it). The real run silently retains such in-use images.

Auto-prune at creation

The same retention runs automatically (no flag needed):

• After charly box build (push runs excluded) → keep_images.
• After charly check run (any path: bed / score) → keep_check_runs, after the new run's output is written so the newest run is kept.

charly clean exists for on-demand sweeps and to clear a pre-existing backlog.

Out of scope

VM disk images (output/, image/*/output/) are single products per type (overwritten on rebuild, not accumulated) — remove them on demand with charly vm destroy --disk. The VM raw intermediate is already auto-cleaned during the qcow2 build.

Implementation

charly/clean.go — pruneImagesByRetention, pruneCheckRuns, cleanMakepkgArtifacts, CleanCmd (the in-core impl + the hidden charly __clean registration in charly/main.go) + candy/plugin-clean/ (the out-of-tree command:clean forwarder). Hooks in BuildCmd.Run (charly/build.go) and CheckRunCmd.Run (charly/check_runner_cmd.go). Retention keys live on BoxConfig (charly/config.go), merged via mergeBoxConfig (charly/unified.go), validated in validateBuildTunables (charly/validate.go).

Cross-References

• /charly-build:build — charly box build + the keep_images auto-prune.
• /charly-check:check — charly check run + the keep_check_runs auto-prune.
• /charly-vm:vm — charly vm destroy --disk for VM disk removal.
• /charly-image:image — the defaults: block where retention keys live.