Repository Archival & Deprecation Guide

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Repository Archival & Deprecation Guide
Retiring Gitea Projects Safely
This guide may be updated as GGU policies, procedures, platforms, and organizational needs change.

Archive repositories that are no longer actively maintained but still have historical or operational value.

 

Before Archiving

• Confirm the project is actually retired or superseded.
• Update the README with status and replacement project if one exists.
• Resolve or document critical open issues.
• Remove active secrets and obsolete deploy credentials.

 

Archive

• Use Gitea's archive/read-only behavior when appropriate.
• Preserve tags/releases needed for historical deployments.
• Do not delete repositories solely because they are old.

 

Delete Only When

Deletion is explicitly approved and the repository has no continuing legal, operational, historical, or recovery value.

 

Change Control

• Know what you are changing and why.
• Back up or ensure a rollback path for high-impact changes.
• Avoid combining unrelated changes.
• Record material production changes.
• Test before production when practical.

 

Validation

• Confirm the service starts successfully.
• Review logs for new errors.
• Test the exact behavior changed.
• Confirm permissions and integrations still work.
• Monitor briefly after deployment for delayed failures.

 

Escalation

If a change affects systems outside your responsibility, creates a security concern, or cannot be safely reversed, stop and escalate rather than continuing to experiment in production.

 

Archive Metadata

• Reason for retirement.
• Replacement repository/service.
• Last known production version.
• Archive owner/contact.
• Known dependencies still using the project.

 

Prerequisites

• Confirm you are authorized to make the change.
• Confirm the target system/server/repository.
• Read current project or service documentation.
• Identify the expected result.
• Identify a rollback or recovery path for high-impact work.

 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Copying commands or values from a different server without checking context.
• Making several unrelated changes before testing.
• Ignoring warnings because the service still appears to start.
• Editing production directly when a safer test or review path exists.
• Deleting old files or backups before the replacement is verified.
• Treating permissions errors as a reason to grant broad administrator access.
• Failing to record what changed.

 

Operational Record

For material changes, record enough information for another administrator to understand the target, change, reason, result, and rollback point. This may be a ticket, issue, pull request, deployment note, incident record, or appropriate Leadership message.

 

If Something Goes Wrong

1. Stop making unrelated changes.
2. Preserve the current logs and error output.
3. Determine whether immediate rollback is safer than continued troubleshooting.
4. Restore the last known-good state where practical.
5. Escalate with the exact error, target service, recent changes, and reproduction steps.
6. After recovery, document the cause and any preventative follow-up.

 

Archive history before deleting knowledge.