Official Trim your repository size with Purge

Real-time 3D projects can grow substantially in storage size. The iterative nature of development, trying as many ideas as possible, can generate multiple revisions of large files that, by design, are kept safely stored in Unity Version Control. Although keeping this behavior as the standard we also want to provide our customers with flexibility so they can choose how to better manage their data.

We are excited to introduce Purge. You'll have the power to permanently delete those old, unused revisions and trim your repository data leaving room for the ideas that lie ahead. You'll be able to select a specific period of time and file extensions you want to remove, and in a few steps, you get your repository shrunk.

Important note: this operation is destructive and irreversible. While we want to give users the flexibility to have the ability to control their repositories, we also don’t recommend purging your repositories. Unity Version Control is designed to keep the history of your project fully registered as long as it lives, and the use of purge means that you are losing data.​

A feature with safety features in mind
While this operation is destructive and irreversible, we designed it to preserve the most vital revisions. This ensures that you will always have stable checkpoints inside your repository.

The purging process calculates the scope of your requests skipping those revisions loaded at the head of a branch or if they exist in a changeset with a label. These simple safety features guarantee you can always return to any label or branch head.

Try now on your CLI
Purge is only available through the command line interface, where you can calculate, execute and consult the history of your operations. Don’t forget to set permissions to it and keep it as an administrator-only functionality.

First, you will need to request a purge. This is done using the “cm purge register” command, specifying the file extension and the ‘before’ date when to apply the purge.

Code (csharp):

1. >cm purge register ".png" "2023-Jun-21 13:40" --repository=prince
2. A7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea

The register command will return you a purge GUID, this value can be used to check its status via the “cm purge show” command:

Code (csharp):

1. > cm purge show a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea
2. PurgeId: a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea
3. Repository: prince
4. Author: manu
5. Status: ReadyToPurge
6. Purge size: 77 revisions, 290.06 MB
7. .png: 77 revisions, 290.06 MB

Once you are sure you want to run the purge operation, you will need to use the “cm purge execute” command, specifying the purge GUID you want to execute.

Code (csharp):

1. >cm purge execute a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea
2. PurgeId: a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea
3. Repository: prince
4. Author: manu
5. Status: ReadyToPurge
6. Purge size: 77 revisions, 290.06 MB
7. .png: 77 revisions, 290.06 MB

You’ll need to confirm the request to safeguard the process.

Code (csharp):

1. This operation cannot be undone or canceled. You will permanently lose the revisions of these files.
2. Tip: if you want to inspect all the affected revisions, do NOT continue and run this command:
3.  
4. $ cm purge show a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea --verbose --server=localhost:8787
5.  
6. Are you sure you want to execute the purge? (y/n)
7.  
8. y
9.  
10. The purge action is now running.

Lastly, you can use the command “cm purge history” to check the specific status of one purge or previously executed purges.

Code (csharp):

1. > cm purge history
2. a7919afc-45af-4c58-a5b8-c54c32f1c0ea PurgeCompleted

Check the complete CLI documentation and learn more about Purge
Since we are talking about CLI, we recently updated and brought the documentation to the web, making it easy to everyone to find, search and learn about every available command and the extensive list of capabilities from Unity Version Control.

Important note: if any purged revisions are selected in the graphical interfaces you’ll get a message displaying that the specific revision was purged and is not available anymore.​

How to Access
You can visit our webpage and download the latest version right now. Please note that this feature is only available through the Unity Version Control CLI and for cloud customers. Only new Cloud organizations will have the new ‘purge’ permission enabled by default for the “Administrators” group, if you want to start using this feature make sure you grant the ‘purge’ permission first.

If you are not a customer or want to start using Unity DevOps for free you can subscribe here.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys!

The purge permission is new, so organizations created before this feature do not have it set for the Administrators group (unlike the new ones). The appropriate thing to do is to add that permission for the Administrators group, which can be done through the ACL subcommand or through the GUI. We'll improve that in future iterations to add support from the web as well.

Feedback noted, definitely we want to support all file extensions that are relevant for users, and we'll increase support over time. The date was a design decision we need to create guardrails to prevent a repository from being mistakenly purged, same applies to the automation you described. We'll consider all of those for future iterations as we get more customer feedback.

Cheers!

 

Hi, I'm afraid it's not planned for the following months.

 

I'm afraid I cannot reproduce the issue. I replied to your support ticket with some ideas to debug what could be the problem.

If you want to purge file paths, please use the "cm archive --help" command instead.