At some point in the life of a repository, you may want to step away from it. This break may happen for many reasons. Perhaps the project is no longer useful, having been supplanted by other better projects. Perhaps the project is a runaway success, but you don’t have the time to give it the attention it deserves.
Whatever the reason, it’s important to handle the end of your involvement with the repository with the same care you showed in starting it.
1. Archiving a project
Archiving a project is a good option when a project is no longer all that useful to others. Or even if it’s still useful, but mostly complete, archiving could be a good option. Archiving a project indicates that the project is no longer actively maintained. The code is still available to the world, and people can fork and star your project, but nobody can create new issues, pull requests, or push code to an archived repository.
To archive a repository, go to the repository settings page:
- Scroll all the way down to the Danger Zone and click Archive this repository, as shown in Figure 10-18.
Clicking this button displays a detailed confirmation box that describes what will happen if you archive the repository as shown in Figure 10-19.
- Type the name of the repository and click I understand the consequences, archive this repository to archive it.
Your repository is archived.
2. Transferring ownership
If your project is popular with a robust set of maintained, you may want to transfer ownership to another account rather than archive the project. Transferring ownerships lets the new owner have full rights to the repository and continue to maintain it.
To transfer ownership:
- Go to your repository’s Settings page and scroll down to the Danger Zone.
- Click the Transfer button to bring up the transfer dialog box, shown in Figure 10-20.
- Confirm the current repository’s name and type the new owner’s username or organization name.
The URL to the repository changes, but GitHub redirects the old URL to the new URL when anyone tries to visit the repository.
Source: Guthals Sarah, Haack Phil (2019), GitHub for Dummies, Wiley.