dmuth / docker-remove-dependent-child-images

Script to remove dependent child images of a Docker Container

Update 21 May 2021: I learned a new trick which probably makes this script completely unnecessary--just running docker rmi $(docker images --filter "dangling=true" -q ) should do the trick. I will keep this script around for legacy reasons, though.

Script to remove dependent child images of a Docker Container

As much as I love using Docker, one of the frustrations I have is when I try to remove an an image which other images are based on, only to get this error:

$ docker rmi b171179240df
Error response from daemon: conflict: unable to delete b171179240df (cannot be forced) - image has dependent child images

I did some searches on Google, and most of the advice centered around the heavy-handed approach of removing all Docker images and basically starting over with a clean slate. That approach didn't set well with me because it doesn't strike me as all that efficient, and also causes me to have to spend more time waiting for unrelated containers to build.

That prompted me to write a script which, when provided with the ID of a container to remove, will recurse through all child containers and delete them first.

Quick and Dirty Usage

bash <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dmuth/docker-remove-dependent-child-images/master/docker-remove-image) IMAGE_ID

That will delete the image IMAGE_ID, and all child images.

No muss, no fuss, no awkward explanations to senior engineers.

Sample Output

Output of the run of demo.sh:

Development

• Run the script ./tests.sh to create some nested containers and then run this script.

Contact

• Email: doug.muth AT gmail DOT com
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docker-remove-dependent-child-images's Issues

Does not identify child images

This code in the docker-remove-image script:

docker images --filter since=IMAGE_ID

Identifies images created more recently (newer) than the specified image (IMAGE_ID), not child images.