How can I clean up the latest tags in the registry?

How to Use GitLab
1

Problem to solve

How can I delete the latest tags in the GitLab Registry using the cleanup policy settings?
Currently, we build the Docker images like this:
docker build . -t $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG:$CI_COMMIT_SHA -t $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG:latest –push
This results in a lot of latest tags remaining from branches that have not existed for years.

Steps to reproduce

Build images with this command:
docker build . -t $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG:$CI_COMMIT_SHA -t $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG:latest –push

Configuration

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On self-managed instances, add the relevant configuration settings or changes.

image
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image

Versions

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Versions

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The latest tag is always kept using cleanup policies. One workflow change could be to treat Git branches / Git commit refs as tag names, i.e. 1234dfge-feature-xzy-20240716 and not use the commit ref as image name.

Deleting container image tags in bulk can be done through an API action, for example described in Automate storage management | GitLab

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