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Last updated: 10 May 2023

Retire a repo

1. Update README

Add a note to the top of the README explaining that the repo has been retired and, if applicable, what it has been replaced by.

2. Close open issues and pull requests

Once a repository is archived all of its issues and pull requests become read-only and the authors will not be able to close them. We want to avoid giving the impression that these will eventually be acted upon. Leaving them open will also affect metrics we collect such as Dependabot statistics.

3. Unpublish the GitHub pages site (if it has one)

Archiving a repo doesn’t unpublish the GitHub Pages site linked to the repository, so you’ll need to do that first.

4. Archive the repo

Go into the repository settings in GitHub, and archive the repo.

5. Update the Developer Docs

Mark the application as retired in govuk-developer-docs.

6. Remove other references

Do a search on GitHub to find any references to the repository and update or remove them.