xpire - a tool to manage data expiration

xpire is a CLI tool that can store information about when data should expire and delete the data accordingly. It aims to be a simple tool usable by humans or in scripts to handle deletion of obsolete data. xpire itself is stateless, no daemon or database backend is required, all information in stored in the filesystems themselfs.

While the xpire binary is only the user interface, the actual work is done by plugins which should enable xpire to make use of filesystem specific structures like subvolumes or snapshots to prevent expensive tree walks during pruning. Each plugin can decide where the expiry date is stored but the most common case is to use the extended attribute user.expire="YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS".

Usage

# set a expiration date
xpire --path /data/foo/ --set "2023-05-01 15:00:00"

# list all expiration dates
xpire --path /data --list

# recursively prune all expired data
xpire --path /data --prune

Be arware that you might need root priviledges depending on the plugin used.

Building from source

Just run make and then the binary is available under ./xpire.

Supported filesystems

Until now plugins for the following filesystems are provided by this repository:

• btrfs
• zfs

See ./filesystems/ for details about them.

Development status

xpire is still under heavy development which means that both CLI parameters and the plugin API may change without prior notice before version 1.0 is reached. This tool and all plugins come as they are and without any warranty. Do not use for production data.

AI/LLMs disclaimer

Various AI tools are used in this project to

• write tests and the testing framework
• review code for hunting bugs and misbehaviour
• teach the developer new Golang features

The main code of this repository is written by a human. Smaller fixes might be added by AI tooling but are always reviewed by a human the same way a external contribution is.

Contribution

Feedback and contributions are welcome! Please use Github issues and Github pull requests.

For writing new plugins, take a look at ./pluginapi/pluginapi.go first.

AI/LLM usage for development

This project does not forbid AI usage generally, although the following rules apply:

• Code SHOULD be written by humans
  • Smaller changes like error catches are allowed from AI tools
  • Larger changes from AI tools are not wanted
• All code MUST be reviewed by a human
• AI tools CAN be used to write
  • Documentation
  • Specifications
  • READMEs and help files
  • Tests
• AI usage MUST be reported and commits be marked accordingly