Retire an application
0. Unpublish routes
Some applications are responsible for publishing certain routes. If you’re retiring a publishing application, make sure you check if any of its content items need to be unpublished and do it via the Publishing API.
This step is marked as step 0 as really it is a pre-requisite step you ought to do before retiring the application.
1. Raise PRs to remove the app from dependent places
Remove end-to-end tests
Remove any end-to-end tests specific to the application.
Remove from GOV.UK Docker
Remove from the projects directory and any references in docker compose or throughout the repo.
Remove public DNS entries
Request any public DNS entries be removed. If the app had an admin UI, it will
have had public DNS entries in the publishing.service.gov.uk domain (likely one per
environment, all of which need removing).
Follow the instructions for DNS changes in order to remove these.
Remove from govuk-helm-charts
Remove the app’s entry in govuk-helm-charts from:
- /charts/app-config/values-integration.yaml
- /charts/app-config/values-staging.yaml
- /charts/app-config/values-production.yaml
- (if present) /charts/app-config/templates/signon-secrets-sync-configmap.yaml
- (if present) /charts/external-secrets/templates/
It’s also wise to search that repo for other references to the app being retired. Once the PR is merged (Example PR), the app pods will automatically be removed by Argo.
Remove from govuk-infrastructure
Remove govuk-infrastructure’s references to the app.
This includes Terraform-managed resources as well as the Sentry integration. See example.
Note that this will automatically destroy the corresponding resources in AWS (e.g. database) on merge.
Remove from govuk-dependabot-merger (if applicable)
Remove from Publishing API content schema tests (if applicable)
2. Soft-mark the application as retired
Archive the repo
Follow the steps at Retire a repo.
Pay special attention to the Terraform aspects of those steps: you’ll want to ensure those steps are followed prior merging your govuk-infrastructure PR from earlier.
Remove from Heroku
If relevant (e.g. if Heroku was used for previews).
Update Signon
Mark the application as “retired” in signon, if it used it:
- Click on the Applications tab.
- Find the application that is being retired and click the “edit” button.
- Tick the box that says “This application is retired”, then save your changes.
Do this in both Integration and Production, since Signon is one of the few places where Production doesn’t automatically overwrite Integration. (Production does overwrite Staging, however, so that will have the same changes applied automatically.)
Remove from the GOV.UK architecture diagram
Remove the application from the GOV.UK architecture diagram.
3. Apply the destructive actions
Merge the PRs raised earlier
See step 1.
Delete the app in the Release app
- Edit the application in the release app (you’ll need the
deploypermission to do this) - Press the ‘Delete application’ button.
Manually delete any AWS resources not managed by Terraform
If your app is particularly unique/legacy and uses any resources that are not managed by Terraform, those resources will need manually deleting in AWS.