Clear cache in GitHub Actions

You can clear all cache using the GitHub CLI with the following command, execute this from within the local directory where you cloned the repository:

gh cache delete --all 

The --all flag is documented in the manual for the CLI

-a, --all Delete all caches

This can be done from GH Actions as well.

name: Clear cache on: workflow_dispatch: permissions: actions: write jobs: clear-cache: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Clear cache uses: actions/github-script@v6 with: script: | console.log("About to clear") const caches = await github.rest.actions.getActionsCacheList({ owner: context.repo.owner, repo: context.repo.repo, }) for (const cache of caches.data.actions_caches) { console.log(cache) github.rest.actions.deleteActionsCacheById({ owner: context.repo.owner, repo: context.repo.repo, cache_id: cache.id, }) } console.log("Clear completed") 

Make sure it's merged to HEAD branch and trigger it manually from Actions or add your custom triggers.

You cannot force a clear cache currently and it seems there is an open feature request for it at the moment https://github.com/actions/cache/issues/2. If I were you, I would post the request there as well so that they know that more people want the feature implemented.

A few things to note about the action:

There are not parameters in the action and not even in the toolkit package that this action is build on top of.

Getting deep into the toolkit code they use a cache api url to do all the good stuff. This means we don't even know if that api supports it with the assumption that we try to test it out and see what else it provides by hitting it directly. Here is the line for the api call for which the base url is taken from env ACTIONS_CACHE_URL

https://github.com/actions/toolkit/blob/c2bc747506bf562195a02bd4fdb1ff2a95d8b7ed/packages/cache/src/internal/cacheHttpClient.ts#L44

npm package as reference https://www.npmjs.com/package/@actions/cache

If we take a step back for a moment and go back to the github docs now that we have looked deep into the action/cache code and how it works,

Per the github docs https://docs.github.com/en/actions/configuring-and-managing-workflows/caching-dependencies-to-speed-up-workflows

There are two things to note,

Once you create a cache, you cannot change the contents of an existing cache but you can create a new cache with a new key. 

GitHub will remove any cache entries that have not been accessed in over 7 days. 

Based @beatngu13 answer I've created Makefile target that remove all cache from Github Actions:

GH_REPO ?= ALLATRA-IT/ephyr # replace with your `org/repo` # Clear Github Acions usage cache. # # Need to install github cli first [https://cli.github.com/] and authorize # # Usage: # make gh.clear gh.clear: gh api --paginate -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ /repos/$(GH_REPO)/actions/caches \ | for ID in `jq '.actions_caches[].id'`; \ do echo "Deleting $$ID"; \ gh api --method DELETE /repos/$(GH_REPO)/actions/caches/$$ID | echo; done 

Need to install Github CLI and jq tool tools first. After install Github CLI you need to authorize with:

gh auth login 

One more easy and straightforward way to remove Actions' cache - Purge cache GH Action.

This action allows the cache of GitHub Actions to be automatically purged based on the last usage and configured TTL (default - 7 days).

Example:

name: Clear Cache on: schedule: - cron: '0 0 * * *' # Runs once a day (https://crontab.guru/once-a-day) jobs: clear: name: Clear cache runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: MyAlbum/purge-cache@v1 with: max-age: 604800 # Cache max 7 days since last use (this is the default) 

The workflow above will run once a day and remove all the cache that was last used more than 7 days ago.

@GegznaV you can use something like tmate, and manually clear cache by sshing into a runner.

keep the last cache with this bash function (add it to your .bashrc file)

function gh_clear_old_caches(){ GH_REPO='your_github_user/your_repository' echo "deleting all caches, except the last" gh api --paginate -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \ "/repos/${GH_REPO}/actions/caches" \ | for ID in `jq '.actions_caches | sort_by(.id) | .[:-1][] | .id '`; \ do echo "Deleting cache id ${ID}"; \ gh api --method DELETE -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" "/repos/${GH_REPO}/actions/caches/${ID}" | echo; \ done } 

name completion works with bash functions as well:

gh_<tab> 

the addition in this one is that jq first sorts the result by id (assuming that the most recent one has the largest).

[:-1] means every id, except the last.

For anyone looking for a simple commandline solution, the following shell command will also do it. It requires the Github CLI + JQ:

gh api -H 'Accept: application/vnd.github+json' /repos/realm/realm-kotlin/actions/caches --paginate | jq -r '.actions_caches | .[].key' | sed -e 's/|/%7c/g' -e 's/\[/%5b/g' -e 's/\]/%5d/g' | xargs -I {} sh -c 'gh api --method DELETE -H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" /repos/<OWNER>/<REPO>/actions/caches?key={} --silent'

In this case, I'm using sed to URL encode special characters in the key. I just needed to handle |, [ and ]. Others can be added as needed. See e.g. https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/5a90c49e0976aadfe0726a847ce58736#file-url_encode-sh-L11

Here's another automated solution similar to @beatngu13's cache key invalidation method. This one uses a generated timestamp file that gets committed and then used in a hashFiles(...) prefix to the cache key.

Included is a set of GNU Makefile targets to make using this method very easy: make clear-github-cache

Note: Make sure each Makefile "recipe" section is indented with 1 tab character! StackOverflow converts tabs to spaces in the code block.

.github/clear_github_actions_cache: date +%s > .github/clear_github_actions_cache .PHONY: clean-github-cache-file clear-github-cache clear-github-cache: clean-github-cache-file .github/clear_github_actions_cache ## Force GitHub Actions Cache key to change for fresh CI run git add .github/clear_github_actions_cache git commit -m "Clear GitHub Actions Cache @ $$(cat .github/clear_github_actions_cache)" clean-github-cache-file: ## Remove GitHub Actions Cache timestamp invalidator file. [ -f '.github/clear_github_actions_cache' ] && rm -f '.github/clear_github_actions_cache' || true 

Then, inside the GitHub Actions workflow YAML, add a cache key prefix that uses the hash of this file:

 - name: Cache R packages if: runner.os != 'Windows' uses: actions/cache@v2 with: path: ${{ env.R_LIBS_USER }} key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ runner.arch }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/clear_github_actions_cache') }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/R-version') }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/depends.Rds') }} restore-keys: | ${{ runner.os }}-${{ runner.arch }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/clear_github_actions_cache') }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/R-version') }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/depends.Rds') }} ${{ runner.os }}-${{ runner.arch }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/clear_github_actions_cache') }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/R-version') }}- ${{ runner.os }}-${{ runner.arch }}-${{ hashFiles('.github/clear_github_actions_cache') }}- 

Now just run:

make clear-github-cache 

This generates and commits a file, .github/clear_github_actions_cache, with Unix timestamp as contents. The hashFiles(...) cache key prefix uses this and will generate a unique hash of this file as a prefix to the rest of the cache / restore-key.

Next time you use git push, the cache key will be invalidated... effectively running GitHub Actions with an empty cache.