Red Hat Edge Manager enforces lifecycle protection rules that prevent destructive operations on catalog items that are actively referenced by devices or fleets. These protections ensure that catalog-to-device relationships remain stable and that deployed software is not disrupted by catalog changes.

Deletion and alteration protection

A catalog item version is considered actively referenced when any device or fleet specification contains a catalogItemRef field that points to that catalog, item, and version. The Red Hat Edge Manager API blocks the following operations on actively referenced catalog item versions:

• Deleting a catalog item version: If the version is referenced by one or more devices or fleets, the API returns an error and the deletion does not proceed.
• Altering a deployed version: If you attempt to modify the artifact references or metadata of a catalog item version that is actively deployed, the API returns an error.

To delete or modify an actively referenced catalog item version, you must first remove the catalogItemRef references from all affected devices and fleets. For the step-by-step procedure, see Safely remove or update in-use catalog items in the Additional resources section.

Type-contradiction validation

The Red Hat Edge Manager API validates that catalog item references match the expected context in the device or fleet specification. Referencing a catalog item from the wrong specification context results in a type-mismatch error:

• An operating-system-type catalog item referenced in spec.applications as a non-quadlet application is rejected.
• An application-type catalog item (such as a quadlet or container item) referenced in spec.os is rejected.

Type-contradiction validation runs when you create or update a device or fleet specification. The API rejects the request immediately with a descriptive error message.