Delete failed and cancelled GitHub Actions workflow runs for a given workflow

README.md

Delete failed and cancelled GitHub Actions workflow runs

The script will remove failed and cancelled workflow runs from your GitHub Action workflow history log.

Prerequisite

• GitHub CLI installed.

Installation

• Save delete-failed-ga-runs.sh to a local folder.
• chmod +x delete-failed-ga-runs.sh so you can run the script.

Usage

delete-failed-ga-runs.sh [-d] <repository> <workflow-name>

• -d: Do a dry run, i.e. just show me what's going to happen, but don't delete anything.
• <repository>: owner/repo-name
• <workflow-name>: the workflow file name, e.g.: myworkflow.yml

delete-failed-ga-runs.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Delete failed and cancelled workflow runs for a given workflow
# Usage: delete-failed-ga-runs.sh [-d] <repository> <workflow-name>
#   -d: dry run mode

set -eo pipefail

# Parse arguments
DRY_RUN=0
while getopts "d" opt; do
	case $opt in
	d) DRY_RUN=1 ;;
	*) exit 1 ;;
	esac
done
shift $((OPTIND - 1))

REPOSITORY=$1
WORKFLOW_NAME=$2
MAX_PARALLEL=5
RATE_LIMIT_SLEEP=0.2

# Validate arguments
if [[ -z "$REPOSITORY" || -z "$WORKFLOW_NAME" ]]; then
	echo "Usage: $0 [-d] <repository> <workflow-name>"
	exit 1
fi

delete_run() {
	local run_id=$1
	if [[ $DRY_RUN -eq 1 ]]; then
		echo "[DRY RUN] Would delete run $run_id"
		return 0
	fi

	echo "Deleting run $run_id..."
	if gh api --silent --method DELETE \
		-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
		-H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
		"/repos/$REPOSITORY/actions/runs/$run_id"; then
		echo "✓ Deleted run $run_id"
	else
		echo "✗ Failed to delete run $run_id"
		return 1
	fi
	sleep $RATE_LIMIT_SLEEP
}
export -f delete_run
export REPOSITORY
export RATE_LIMIT_SLEEP
export DRY_RUN

echo "Fetching failed runs for workflow $WORKFLOW_NAME in $REPOSITORY..."

RUNS=$(gh api \
	-H "Accept: application/vnd.github+json" \
	-H "X-GitHub-Api-Version: 2022-11-28" \
	"/repos/$REPOSITORY/actions/workflows/$WORKFLOW_NAME/runs" \
	--paginate \
	--jq '.workflow_runs[] | select(.conclusion == "failure" or .conclusion == "startup_failure" or .conclusion == "cancelled") | .id')

RUN_COUNT=$(echo "$RUNS" | grep -c '^' || true)
echo "Found $RUN_COUNT failed runs"

if [[ $RUN_COUNT -eq 0 ]]; then
	exit 0
fi

echo "$RUNS" | xargs -P $MAX_PARALLEL -I {} bash -c 'delete_run "$@"' _ {}

echo "Completed deletion process"