Has it occured to you that a GitLab repository that had deletion pending was not deleted after deadline passed?

Question

According to new GitLab rules, if you delete a repo, this deletion is executed with some delay ( one week ), the deletion deadline is shown in the repo head ( you can revert this decision up to the deadline ).

My repo was to be deleted on 18th February. Now it is 19th February and the repo is still there, and still says it will be deleted on 18th February. ( An other repo of mine that had deletion pending on 18th February, was deleted in due course. ) Is this a common thing? Has this happened to you?

Answer 1

Check first if it is a timezone issue, meaning if it is supposed to be deleted at an UTC hour which would mean:

• it is still the 18th
• even though it is already 19th in your zone

If not, check the logs for any error message regarding that repository.

The OP sbtpr adds in the comments:

I waited patiently, out of curiosity, to see what happens, and voila, after almost an other week passed, on 24th February, my repo was deleted.
So I'd better factor in that with GitLab deleting a repo may take 2 weeks.

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Note that a pending deletion status can also be canceled.

See GitLab 14.9 (March 2022)

Users can recover projects pending deletion

In previous versions of GitLab, only Administrators could see projects that were pending deletion.

With GitLab 14.9, all users can now view the Pending deletion tab.
Project and group owners can view and recover projects that were accidentally deleted and have not yet been permanently removed from disk. This means users can recover their own accidentally deleted projects without needing to direct all recovery requests to an Administrator.

To see the tab, on the top bar, select Menu > Projects > Pending deletion.

See Documentation and Issue.