Updating a lifecycle policy

Written by

Yandex Cloud

Improved by

Danila N.

Updated at May 29, 2025

Examples

Once you create a lifecycle policy, you can edit its rules as well as its status, name, or description.

Management console

CLI

Terraform

API

In the management console, select the folder where the registry was created.
In the list of services, select Container Registry.
Select the registry and click the row with its name.
Select the repository and click the row with its name.
In the left-hand panel, click Lifecycle.
In the row with the lifecycle policy, click and select Edit.
Edit the lifecycle policy parameters:
- Name.
- Description.
- Status.
- Under Lifecycle policy rules, update the rule parameters:
  - Tag regexp: Docker image tag for filtering. Java regular expressions are supported. For example, the test.* regular expression retrieves all images with tags starting with test.
  - Untagged: Flag indicating that the rule applies to Docker images without tags.
  - Expire period, in days: Time after which the lifecycle policy may apply to the Docker image.
  - Retained top: Number of Docker images that are not deleted even if they match the rule.
  - Description.
Click Save.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

See the description of the CLI command for updating policy parameters:
```
yc container repository lifecycle-policy update --help
```
Change the policy parameters, e.g., rename it:
```
yc container repository lifecycle-policy update <policy_ID> \
   --new-name=new-policy
```
To find out the policy ID, get a list of lifecycle policies in a repository or registry.

If you do not have Terraform yet, install it and configure its Yandex Cloud provider.

Open the configuration file and edit the fragment with the policy description:

resource "yandex_container_repository_lifecycle_policy" "my_lifecycle_policy" {
  name          = "best-policy"
  status        = "active"
  repository_id = "crpfvi6o4ra7********"

  rule {
    description   = "rule for applying policy"
    untagged      = true
    tag_regexp    = ".*"
    retained_top  = 1
    expire_period = "48h"
  }
}

Apply the changes:
1. In the terminal, go to the folder where you edited the configuration file.
2. Make sure the configuration file is correct using this command:
```
terraform validate
```
  If the configuration is correct, you will get this message:
```
Success! The configuration is valid.
```
3. Run this command:
```
terraform plan
```
  The terminal will display a list of resources with their properties. No changes will be made at this step. If the configuration contains any errors, Terraform will point them out.
4. Apply the changes:
```
terraform apply
```
5. Type yes and press Enter to confirm the changes.

This will update the lifecycle policy in the specified repository. You can check the policy update using the management console or this CLI command:

yc container repository lifecycle-policy list --registry-id <registry_ID>

To edit a lifecycle policy, use the Update method for the LifecyclePolicyService resource. Specify the policy ID in the lifecycle_policy_id property.

You can retrieve a list of policies using the List method for the LifecyclePolicyService resource.

Examples

Updating lifecycle policy rules

CLI

Prepare new policy rules and save them to a file named new-rules.json.

Example of the contents of a file with rules, where:
- description: Description of the policy rule.
- tag_regexp: Docker image tag for filtering. Java regular expressions are supported. For example, the test.* regular expression retrieves all images with tags starting with test.
- untagged: Flag indicating that the rule applies to Docker images without tags.
- expire_period: Time after which the lifecycle policy may apply to the Docker image. This parameter is formatted as a number and a unit of measure, such as s, m, h, or d (seconds, minutes, hours, or days). expire_period must be a multiple of 24 hours.
- retained_top: Number of Docker images that are not deleted even if they match the rule.
```
[
  {
    "description": "delete prod Docker images older than 60 days but retain 20 last ones",
    "tag_regexp": "prod",
    "expire_period": "60d",
    "retained_top": 20
  },
  {
    "description": "delete all test Docker images except 10 last ones",
    "tag_regexp": "test.*",
    "retained_top": 10
  },
  {
    "description": "delete all untagged Docker images older than 48 hours",
    "untagged": true,
    "expire_period": "48h"
  }
]
```

Change the policy rules by running the command with the following parameter:

new-rules: Path to the file with the new policy description.

Alert

Updating the policy completely overwrites all current rules by destroying them.

yc container repository lifecycle-policy update crp6lg1868p3******** --new-rules ./new-rules.json

Result:

WARN: All current lifecycle rules will be overwritten. Are you sure?[y/N] y
id: crp6lg1868p3********
name: test-policy
...
  expire_period: 172800s
  tag_regexp: test.*
  untagged: true