Your CI artifacts are a liability, not an asset.
A common blind spot in many CI/CD pipelines is the assumption that more data is always better. Unmanaged build artifacts, however, introduce significant cost, complexity, and risk when not governed by a deliberate strategy.
The most prevalent anti-pattern observed in the industry is the reliance on mutable tags like latest. This practice fundamentally breaks build reproducibility, leading to unpredictable deployments and debugging nightmares. Immutability is not a suggestion; it is a prerequisite for stable, distributed systems.
Another frequent misstep is treating all artifacts with equal importance. Storing every feature-branch build indefinitely is a classic example of digital hoarding that directly inflates storage costs with rapidly diminishing returns.
I believe a mature artifact strategy must be tiered and reflect business value.
- Production release artifacts: Retain indefinitely for rollbacks and compliance. These are non-negotiable historical records.
- Mainline branch artifacts: Retain for a moderate period (e.g., 90 days) to support integration testing and debugging.
- Feature branch artifacts: Prune aggressively (e.g., 7-14 days). Their value is ephemeral and decays quickly.
This approach requires balancing storage costs against traceability. It moves the conversation from “store everything” to a deliberate, policy-driven lifecycle management that aligns technical operations with financial prudence.
What tiered retention policies have you seen successfully implemented to manage the trade-off between cost and long-term traceability?
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