argo CLI list command results not predictable with -o name flag

[samene]

Summary

Using argo CLI I want keep the latest 20 workflows and delete the rest. This runs in a cron job (not argo cron job, normal linux cron)

When I do this

argo list -n argo --no-headers  | tail -n 6
patch-generator-basic-c2pc5      Succeeded   15d   3m   0
patch-generator-basic-vxj92      Succeeded   15d   3m   0
patch-generator-basic-6db47      Succeeded   15d   2m   0
patch-generator-basic-wcwkb      Succeeded   19d   2m   0
patch-generator-basic-tgpqf      Succeeded   20d   2m   0
patch-generator-basic-ldsrb      Succeeded   20d   2m   0

and when I do it with -o name, I get different result

argo list -n argo --no-headers -o name | tail -n 6
patch-generator-basic-6db47
patch-generator-basic-ccklj
patch-generator-basic-tgpqf
patch-generator-basic-mc2bp
patch-generator-advanced-rm76g
patch-generator-basic-vtknt

As you can see both return a different list.

Is there a way to sort the output of argo list in order of creation time? Why ordering is different when -o name is used.

Version: v3.2.4
Kubernetes: v1.21.2
Docker: 20.10.7

[alexec]

This should be the case already:

argo-workflows/cmd/argo/commands/list.go

Line 164 in a94b846

sort.Sort(workflows)

Can you please make sure you're running the latest version of the CLI?

[dinever]

Looks like this issue exists in the latest version.

sort.Sort(workflows) will sort the workflows by their CreationTimestamp and FinishedAt:

argo-workflows/pkg/apis/workflow/v1alpha1/workflow_types.go

Lines 130 to 145 in f1fe3be

	func (w Workflows) Less(i, j int) bool {
	iStart := w[i].ObjectMeta.CreationTimestamp
	iFinish := w[i].Status.FinishedAt
	jStart := w[j].ObjectMeta.CreationTimestamp
	jFinish := w[j].Status.FinishedAt
	if iFinish.IsZero() && jFinish.IsZero() {
	return !iStart.Before(&jStart)
	}
	if iFinish.IsZero() && !jFinish.IsZero() {
	return true
	}
	if !iFinish.IsZero() && jFinish.IsZero() {
	return false
	}
	return jFinish.Before(&iFinish)
	}

When we list workflows with -o name, these timestamps won't be selected by the field selector, so the workflows we got all have 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC timestamps, making the sorting inconsistent.