ECR Lifecycle Policy Missing

What this rule checks

Detects ECR repositories without a lifecycle policy to clean up old images.

How to fix it

1. 1Define a LifecyclePolicy to expire untagged or excess image versions

import { App, Stack } from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import { Construct } from 'constructs';
import * as ecr from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-ecr';

// FLAGGED: repository with no lifecycle policy.
new ecr.CfnRepository(this, 'Repo', {
  repositoryName: 'app',
  imageTagMutability: 'IMMUTABLE',
});

import { App, Stack } from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import { Construct } from 'constructs';
import * as ecr from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-ecr';

// FIXED: lifecycle policy expires untagged images after 14 days.
new ecr.CfnRepository(this, 'Repo', {
  repositoryName: 'app',
  imageTagMutability: 'IMMUTABLE',
  lifecyclePolicy: {
    lifecyclePolicyText: JSON.stringify({
      rules: [
        {
          rulePriority: 1,
          selection: { tagStatus: 'untagged', countType: 'sinceImagePushed', countUnit: 'days', countNumber: 14 },
          action: { type: 'expire' },
        },
      ],
    }),
  },
});

CDK Insights pinpoints the exact file and line in your CDK source for every finding, so you can jump straight to the fix.

Affected resource types

Intentional? Suppress this finding

Sometimes a flag is deliberate — a genuinely public endpoint, say. You can dismiss ecr-lifecycle-policy-missing and the reason is kept in the report, not silently hidden.

In .cdk-insights.json:

{
  "ignoreRules": [
    { "id": "ecr-lifecycle-policy-missing", "reason": "Why this is intentional" }
  ]
}

Or inline in your CDK code:

Validations.of(scope).acknowledge({
  id: 'cdk-insights::ecr-lifecycle-policy-missing',
  reason: 'Why this is intentional',
});

Use the rule ID ecr-lifecycle-policy-missing shown above — not the CDK-* ID from SARIF / GitHub code scanning. To dismiss every finding on one construct instead, use ignorePaths. Suppression docs →

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