DoIT Shared Tools - GitLab - Automated deletion of unneeded projects
Posted: 2025-01-20 11:34:31 Expiration: 2025-04-30 11:34:31
On April 6, 2026, some Project Owners and Maintainers will receive a large number of email warnings about pending Project deletions. There will be a 2 months grace period during which any Project can be exempted from deletion.
The purpose of enabling this feature is to delete Projects that are obsolete and taking up space on the GitLab application server. Many of these are projects in the personal spaces of former students and staff.
The purpose is not to delete any Project that a user wants to keep.
Normally, these notifications will not happen in large batches. During 2026, there will be several batches in order to implement this feature for the first time and clean up obsolete projects that are already inactive for 8+ years.
This large batch of messages is a result of enabling inactive Project deletion in GitLab for the first time. For more about this new policy, see DoIT Shared Tools - GitLab - Deletion of Inactive Projects.
To exempt any Project from deletion, just take an action in the Project that adds an entry to the Project's Activity log.
April 6 will be the first of 4 important dates for the rollout of this feature:
| Key date | Project Inactive since | Email notification | Project deletion |
| April 6, 2026 | January 1, 2017 | April 6, 2026 | June 6, 2026 |
| July 1, 2026 | January 1, 2018 | July 1, 2026 | September 1, 2026 |
| October 1, 2026 | January 1, 2019 | October 1, 2026 | December 1, 2026 |
| January 1, 2027 | January 1, 2020 | January 1, 2027 | March 1, 2027 |
| After January 1, 2027 | 7-year rolling window | Project is 7 years inactive | 2 months after Email notification |
to take can take a simple action in any Project This cluster of messages is a . Future warnings will arrive individually every once in a while.
-- Shared Tools: Benjamin Sousa