Reading/Web/Sunsetting a project

Occasionally projects do not work out and need to be removed. This page provides a checklist for the tasks that should be carried out to do this effectively.

  • Remove from Developers/Maintainers
  • Notify users that the project is disappearing.
    • This is especially important if the project involves storing data or if other projects are making use of APIs or internal functions.
    • If user data is involved, users should be given at least a month to migrate their data and instructions on how to do so
  • Remove extension from cluster and remove any configuration options set in the mediawiki-config repo.
  • Update project as archived on mediawiki.org
  • Remove test jobs from Jenkins
    • If it's not being maintained its test may block merges elsewhere.
  • Remove it from translatewiki
  • Archive it from zuul/ci
  • Abandon all open patchsets
    • This sets expectation to users that their patches are no longer reviewed.
    • If necessary, clone the repo on Github
      • Link to the github repo so if they are interested they can continue development there
  • Remove all files in a new commit or make a commit that disables the software contained in it (e.g. disable the entry point if it is an Mediawiki extension), so that a user that pulls it notices that we assume it has no users and it has no maintainer.
  • Set extension on Gerrit as read only
  • Remove the release tooling repo (specifically make-wmf-branch/config.json)