Deletion Flow Enhancements

4 posts · Apr 2023 – Jul 2025

What this trail covers

GitLab is enhancing its deletion flow for groups and projects across all pricing tiers. This includes implementing a pending deletion state with self-service recovery, standardized status indicators, and an extended recovery window (now 30 days on GitLab.com). Future iterations will bring consistency to Admin area deletions, immediate namespace path reuse, a centralized 'Trash' interface, clear separation of delete actions (temporary vs. permanent), and bulk management capabilities for deleted items.

All GitLab trails

Jul 2025Migrating by direct transfer is generally availableThis post announces the general availability of the direct transfer migration feature for GitLab groups and projects, building upon previous beta releases and improvements in efficiency and reliability. It highlights the advantages over file export methods, such as direct migration of top-level groups with all sub-groups and projects, post-import user contribution mapping, improved handling of large projects through batching and concurrent execution, and better migration result insights. It also provides guidance on when to use the feature, best practices for reducing migration duration, and how to review migration results.
Jul 2025Improving GitLab's deletion flow: What to expect in coming monthsThis post details the ongoing enhancements to GitLab's deletion flow. It highlights the already implemented features: pending deletion state for all users, self-service recovery, clear status indicators, and an extended 30-day recovery window on GitLab.com. It also outlines upcoming features: Admin area consistency with the pending deletion process, immediate namespace path reuse upon deletion, a centralized 'Trash' interface, clear separation of 'Delete' and 'Delete Permanently' actions, and bulk management for deleted items.
Aug 2023How to migrate GitLab groups and projects more efficientlyIntroduced batching for exporting and importing CI/CD pipeline relations to improve migration performance and enable parallelism. This involves splitting CI pipeline data into multiple batches and using concurrent Sidekiq jobs for import. Also added optimizations for exporting CI/CD pipelines by preloading associations and exporting commit notes as a separate relation. Provided guidance on estimating migration duration based on resource types and discussed strategies for efficient migration, including increasing Sidekiq workers and distributing projects across groups.
Apr 2023Updates to GitLab’s delayed deletion feature for projects and groupsThis post details the implementation of delayed deletion as the default behavior for GitLab Ultimate and Premium customers starting in version 16.0. It removes the option for immediate deletion from the Admin Area and group settings, replacing it with a two-step process that first puts the group or project into a pending deletion state for a configurable period (1-90 days for self-managed, 7 days for SaaS). It also describes how projects are renamed during this pending state and the API changes to remove `delayed_project_deletion` and `delayed_group_deletion` parameters, requiring a double confirmation for complete deletion.
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