gitolite/contrib/adc/repo-deletion.mkd

deleting repos safely

(see this thread on the gitolite mailing list)

By default, the old 'rmrepo' ADC (admin-defined command) just went and deleted the repo -- no questions asked! Sometimes, that could be a disaster -- you lose the whole thing in one mad moment of typo-ing or frustration. Ouch.

This has been replaced by 2 families of ADCs. I say "families" because each has one main command and 2 ancillary ones. Admins can choose to install either, both, or neither family of commands.

Local settings for these ADCs can be found in the common settings file "adc.common-functions".

1. 'rm' will remove the repo. If USE_LOCK_UNLOCK is set, rm will refuse to remove a locked repo. All repos are locked by default, and you have to explicitly 'unlock' a repo to remove it. You can also 'lock' it again instead of removing it of course.

   There's also ARE_YOU_SURE, for situations where a simple warning suffices.

   You can also use both these flags if you wish.

2. 'trash' will move the repo to a safe location. There are settings for where this location is and what suffix is added to the repo name. You can 'list-trash' to see what trash you have collected, and you can 'restore' one of the listed repos.

   It's easy to automatically clean out the trash occasionally. By default, entries in the trash look like this:

   foo/r1/2010-10-22_13:14:24
   foo/r1/2010-10-22_13:14:50
   

   This shows a repo foo/r1 that was created and trashed twice.

   Since the date appears in the name, you can use it with a cutoff to clean up old repos. Untested example:

   cutoff=`date -I -d '28 days ago'`
   find $TRASH_CAN -type d -name "20??-??-??_*" | while read r
   do
       d=`basename $r`
       [[ $d < $cutoff ]] && rm -rf $r
   done
   

   Put this in cron to run once a day and that should be it.