Question on new Docker Hub Container Image Retention Policy (August 2020)

Hello Docker Team,

context for my question:
Today Docker has announced an update to the terms and services. If I understand correctly, images on Docker Hub now get deleted if they have been inactive (no push/pull for 6 months) starting 1-Nov-2020.

https://www.docker.com/pricing/retentionfaq

my question:

What exactly does this mean in regards to multi platform manifests?

Let’s assume the following: I have a repo on Docker Hub with multiple tags and on each of these tags I have images for various platforms (i.e. linux/amd64, windows/amd64 1908, windows/amd64 2004, linux/arm64, linux/s390x).

For some of these platforms I’m seeing lots of pulls (i.e. linux/arm64) and for some of the more exotic ones (like linux/s390x) I might not see any at all.

What would happen in a case where some of the platforms of my tag don’t see activity within 6 months?

  • would all images for all platforms under that tag get deleted?
  • would the images for the platforms that didn’t receive enough activity get deleted and the other images stay alive?
    • if so, does the deletion process modify the manifest? Or would the manifest now point to platform images that don’t exist anymore?

As it’s not really possible for me as a user to test this out (as retention doesn’t start before November) it would be great if someone from the Docker Team could quickly clarify. Thanks a lot for your time in advance!

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