NAME

       bup-prune-older - remove older saves

SYNOPSIS

       bup prune-older [options...] <branch...>

DESCRIPTION

       bup  prune-older  removes  (permanently  deletes)  all  saves  except those preserved by the various keep
       arguments detailed below.  At least one keep argument must be specified.  This command is equivalent to a
       suitable bup rm invocation followed by bup gc.

       WARNING:  This  is  one  of  the few bup commands that modifies your archive in intentionally destructive
       ways.  Though if an attempt to join or restore  the  data  you  still  care  about  after  a  prune-older
       succeeds,  that’s  a  fairly encouraging sign that the commands worked correctly.  (The dev/compare-trees
       command in the source tree can be used to help test before/after results.)

KEEP PERIODS

       A --keep PERIOD (as required below) must be an integer followed by a scale, or “forever”.   For  example,
       12y specifies a PERIOD of twelve years.  Here are the valid scales:

       • s indicates seconds

       • min indicates minutes (60s)

       • h indicates hours (60m)

       • d indicates days (24h)

       • w indicates weeks (7d)

       • m indicates months (31d)

       • y indicates years (366d)

       • forever is infinitely far in the past

       As indicated, the PERIODS are computed with respect to the current time, or the --wrt value if specified,
       and do not respect any calendar, so --keep-dailies-for 5d means a period starting exactly 5 * 24 *  60  *
       60 seconds before the starting point.

OPTIONS

       --keep-all-for PERIOD
              when no smaller time scale --keep option applies, retain all saves within the given period.

       --keep-dailies-for PERIOD
              when  no  smaller  time scale --keep option applies, retain the newest save for any day within the
              given period.

       --keep-monthlies-for PERIOD
              when no smaller time scale --keep option applies, retain the newest save for any month within  the
              given period.

       --keep-yearlies-for PERIOD
              when  no  smaller time scale --keep option applies, retain the newest save for any year within the
              given period.

       --wrt UTC_SECONDS
              when computing a keep period, place the most recent end of the range at UTC_SECONDS, and any saves
              newer than this will be kept.

       --pretend
              don’t  do  anything,  just list the actions that would be taken to standard output, one action per
              line like this:

                     - SAVE
                     + SAVE
                     ...

       --gc   garbage collect the repository after removing the relevant saves.  This is the  default  behavior,
              but it can be avoided with --no-gc.

       --gc-threshold N
              only  rewrite  a  packfile  if it’s over N percent garbage; otherwise leave it alone.  The default
              threshold is 10%.

       -#, --compress #
              set the compression level when rewriting archive data to # (a value  from  0-9,  where  9  is  the
              highest and 0 is no compression).  The default is 1 (fast, loose compression).

       -v, --verbose
              increase verbosity (can be specified more than once).

NOTES

       When --verbose is specified, the save periods will be summarized to standard error with lines like this:

              keeping monthlies since 1969-07-20-201800
              keeping all yearlies
              ...

       It’s possible that the current implementation might not be able to format the date if, for example, it is
       far enough back in time.  In that case, you will see something like this:

              keeping yearlies since -30109891477 seconds before 1969-12-31-180000
              ...

EXAMPLES

              # Keep all saves for the past month, and any newer monthlies for
              # the past year.  Delete everything else.
              $ bup prune-older --keep-all-for 1m --keep-monthlies-for 1y

              # Keep all saves for the past 6 months and delete everything else,
              # but only on the semester branch.
              $ bup prune-older --keep-all-for 6m semester

SEE ALSO

       bup-rm(1), bup-gc(1), and bup-fsck(1)

BUP

       Part of the bup(1) suite.

AUTHORS

       Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>.