NuGet/Home

A better cache clean-up and expiration policy

Open

#4,980 opened on Apr 5, 2017

View on GitHub
 (42 comments) (57 reactions) (0 assignees)HTML (1,459 stars) (292 forks)batch import
Area:HttpCachingCategory:Quality WeekPriority:2Type:Featurehelp wanted

Description

edit by @zivkan: a first step has been implemented, allowing package "last used in restore" date to be updated: https://github.com/NuGet/NuGet.Client/pull/4222

edit by NuGet Client Triage:

  • Restore driven - A minimally impactful approach might be to run a "gc" periodically, like say once a week or once a month.
  • Additional command - Community projects like NuGet Cleaner combine with updatePackageLastAccessTime

original post below:

The user local NuGet cache has a tendency to grow unconditionally. Which results in funny tweets like this from @davidfowl:

David Fowler‏ @davidfowl 9m How big is your nuget cache? Mine is 14 gigs #nuget image

Can we track when an item was last hit by package restore and apply some expiration policy? I don't have good data, but I bet a good chunk of the bloat aren't individual packages with a single version but a small number of packages with many versions. If were to just delete older versions that weren't needed for restore for a while, we're probably getting to something saner.

Thoughts?

Contributor guide

Tech stack
csharp
Domain
developer experienceperformance
Issue type
feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
4
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
over 1 week
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
stale
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
mostly clear
Prerequisites
Familiarity with NuGet cacheUnderstanding of cache expiration policies
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
15
Research direction
The issue requests a cache cleanup and expiration policy. A first step was implemented in PR #4222 which adds a way to update package 'last used in restore' date. However, the full feature requires designing a garbage collection mechanism that runs periodically (e.g., weekly or monthly) to delete older versions that haven't been used. The community project NuGet Cleaner also combines with updatePackageLastAccessTime. To proceed, one should examine the existing implementation in NuGet.Client and propose a design for a GC background job or CLI command that respects the access times. Consider discussing in the issue thread for maintainer feedback before implementation.