Prune is a simple tool that lets you remove prune archives in a folder, deleting any archives not matching the specified retention options.
Any file type can be an archive and prune allows you to specify which files are in scope to be pruned. Prune is developed using .NET 8.0 and can be compiled for x64 (Windows, Linux, MacOS) and arm/arm64 (Raspberry Pi). So far it is running in the wild on a Debian 12 VM, a Raspberry Pi 4B 2GB and 4GB, and a Raspberry Pi 3B.
The purpose of this tool is to DELETE files. Please take care when using it and ensure you do not delete the wrong files. I highly recommend using the --verbose and --dry-run flags until your are sure what will be pruned. This tool is provided without warranty of any kind.
prune --helpprune --path /backups/images --verbose --dry-run /
--ext img /
--keep-last 5 /
--keep-daily 3 /
--keep-weekly 2 /
--keep-monthly 4 /prune --path /backups/images -e img -l 5 -d 3 -w 2 -m 4Warning Use the
--verboseand--dry-runflags until you confirm what will be pruned
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
| --path | Required. Path to files location |
| --dry-run | (Default: false) Do not make any changes and display simulated output |
| -v, --verbose | (Default: false) Enable verbose logging |
| -s, --silent | (Default: false) Disable all logging |
| -p, --prefix | File name prefix to use when matching archives |
| -e, --ext | File extension to use when matching archives, i.e. img, txt, tar.gz (do not include dot) |
| -l, --keep-last | (Default: 5) Number of archives to keep at a minimum |
| -h, --keep-hourly | (Default: 0) Number of hourly archives to keep |
| -d, --keep-daily | (Default: 0) Number of daily archives to keep |
| -w, --keep-weekly | (Default: 0) Number of weekly archives to keep |
| -m, --keep-monthly | (Default: 0) Number of monthly archives to keep |
| -y, --keep-yearly | (Default: 0) Number of yearly archives to keep |
| --help | Display this information |
| --version | Display version information |
If there is more than one backup for a time interval, only the latest is kept
The time intervals are processed in the same order as above. Each interval only covers backups within its segment. A single backup will not be matched by multiple time intervals, and if a time interval spans over a previous interval, it will prune until it finds a matching unique file. For example, if the last daily time interval backup is on a Thursday, the weekly time interval will skip to the preceding week to find a file, pruning any other files it iterates through.
The backups are designed to follow the same logic as Proxmox Backup Server pruning. Use their very useful simulator to test different configurations.
To build from source, you will need to have:
Pull down this repo and you can compile the project from the src/ folder.
# linux-x64 environment
dotnet publish --runtime linux-x64 --self-contained -p:PublishSingleFile=true -c Release -o ./out# linux-arm64 environment
dotnet publish --runtime linux-arm64 --self-contained -p:PublishSingleFile=true -c Release -o ./out# win-x64 environment
dotnet publish --runtime win-x64 --self-contained -p:PublishSingleFile=true -c Release -o ./outYou should see the binary in the /src/out folder. You can discard the .pdb file.