conan remove

$ conan remove -h
WARN: Downgrading cache from Conan 2.3.2 to 2.0.17
usage: conan remove [-h] [-v [V]] [-f FORMAT] [-c] [-p PACKAGE_QUERY]
                    [-r REMOTE] [-l LIST] [--lru LRU] [--dry-run]
                    [pattern]

Remove recipes or packages from local cache or a remote.

- If no remote is specified (-r), the removal will be done in the local conan cache.
- If a recipe reference is specified, it will remove the recipe and all the packages, unless -p
  is specified, in that case, only the packages matching the specified query (and not the recipe)
  will be removed.
- If a package reference is specified, it will remove only the package.

positional arguments:
  pattern               A pattern in the form
                        'pkg/version#revision:package_id#revision', e.g:
                        zlib/1.2.13:* means all binaries for zlib/1.2.13. If
                        revision is not specified, it is assumed latest one.

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v [V]                Level of detail of the output. Valid options from less
                        verbose to more verbose: -vquiet, -verror, -vwarning,
                        -vnotice, -vstatus, -v or -vverbose, -vv or -vdebug,
                        -vvv or -vtrace
  -f FORMAT, --format FORMAT
                        Select the output format: json
  -c, --confirm         Remove without requesting a confirmation
  -p PACKAGE_QUERY, --package-query PACKAGE_QUERY
                        Remove all packages (empty) or provide a query:
                        os=Windows AND (arch=x86 OR compiler=gcc)
  -r REMOTE, --remote REMOTE
                        Will remove from the specified remote
  -l LIST, --list LIST  Package list file
  --lru LRU             Remove recipes and binaries that have not been
                        recently used. Use a time limit like --lru=5d (days)
                        or --lru=4w (weeks), h (hours), m(minutes)
  --dry-run             Do not remove any items, only print those which would
                        be removed

The conan remove command removes recipes and packages from the local cache or from a specified remote. Depending on the patterns specified as argument, it is possible to remove a complete package, or just remove the binaries, leaving still the recipe available. You can also use the keyword !latest in the revision part of the pattern to avoid removing the latest recipe or package revision of a certain Conan package.

Use --dry-run to avoid performing actual deletions, and instead get a list of the elements that would have been removed.

It has 2 possible and mutually exclusive inputs:

  • The conan remove <pattern> pattern-based matching of recipes.

  • The conan remove --list=<pkglist> that will remove the artifacts specified in the pkglist json file

There are other commands like conan list (see the patterns documentation there conan list), conan upload and conan download, that take the same patterns.

To remove recipes and their associated package binaries from the local cache:

$ conan remove "*"
# Removes everything from the cache

$ conan remove "zlib/*""
# Remove all possible versions of zlib, including all recipes, revisions and packages

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11
# Remove zlib/1.2.11, all its revisions and package binaries. Leave other zlib versions

$ conan remove "zlib/[<1.2.13]"
# Remove zlib/1.2.11 and zlib/1.2.12, all its revisions and package binaries.

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11#latest
# Remove zlib/1.2.11, only its latest recipe revision and binaries of that revision
# Leave the other zlib/1.2.11 revisions intact

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11#!latest
# Remove all the recipe revisions from zlib/1.2.11 but the latest one
# Leave the latest zlib/1.2.11 revision intact

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11#<revision>
# Remove zlib/1.2.11, only its exact <revision> and binaries of that revision
# Leave the other zlib/1.2.11 revisions intact

To remove only package binaries, but leaving the recipes, it is necessary to specify the pattern including the : separator of the package_id:

$ conan remove "zlib/1.2.11:*"
# Removes all the zlib/1.2.11 package binaries from all the recipe revisions

$ conan remove "zlib/*:*"
# Removes all the binaries from all the recipe revisions from all zlib versions

$ conan remove "zlib/1.2.11#latest:*"
# Removes all the zlib/1.2.11 package binaries only from the latest zlib/1.2.11 recipe revision

$ conan remove "zlib/1.2.11#!latest:*"
# Removes all the zlib/1.2.11 package binaries from all the recipe revisions but the latest one

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11:<package_id>
# Removes the package binary <package_id> from all the zlib/1.2.11 recipe revisions

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11:#latest<package_id>#latest
# Removes only the latest package revision of the binary identified with <package_id>
# from the latest recipe revision of zlib/1.2.11
# WARNING: Recall that having more than 1 package revision is a smell and shouldn't happen
# in normal situations

Note that you can filter which packages will be removed using the --package-query argument:

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11:* -p compiler=clang
# Removes all the zlib/1.2.11 packages built with Clang compiler

You can query packages by both their settings and options, including custom ones. To query for options you need to explicitly add the options. prefix, so that -p options.shared=False will work but -p shared=False won’t.

All the above commands, by default, operate in the Conan cache. To remove artifacts from a server, use the -r=myremote argument:

$ conan remove zlib/1.2.11:* -r=myremote
# Removes all the zlib/1.2.11 package binaries from all the recipe revisions in
# the remote <myremote>