Swap fork repos via "reparent"

[AdamMajer]

Feature Description

Sometimes it's really handy to be able to re-parent a repository. In our workflow, repository can start in one organization where it's originally created. Later, it's "moved" to a more stable organization that takes care of maintenance, backports, etc. while new features are still added in the original development org.

Moving repository from development org to stable org moves all issues, PR histories, etc. That's great if you are looking for new owner, but doesn't work if you only wish stable org to be the "origin" and the rest to be forks.

A process here would create a fork and "re-parent" the current repo in the fork. Adding an option to "reparent=true" to the repository/createFork would be sufficient here.

1. create new fork /fork/pkg from /orig/pkg
2. swap fork_id
3. swap is_fork
4. adjust num_forks +1 and -1 accordingly

And hence the fork then becomes the new parent while keeping everything in the original repo as-is

Discussed on:
https://forum.gitea.com/t/swap-fork-and-parent-repositories-but-keep-everything-else-as-is/11417

Screenshots

No response

[AdamMajer]

This is API proposal only. There's no need to have this exposed in anyway in the UI.

[wxiaoguang]

That's an interesting idea and I think it should be simple enough.

A question in my mind: what if there is a fork-chain? Suppose we have: base1 <- fork2 <- fork3 , then we create repo4 to fork2 with "reparent", then we will get:

• base1 (no forks)
• repo4 (the new base) <- fork2 <- fork3

Did I understand correctly?

[AdamMajer]

If repo is already a fork, then this could be handled either as an error or in the way you describe. Either works. The original motivation is to move the parent (is_fork=false) repo to another organization and changing the current repository to a fork of it. But I see reparenting a fork in a new organization would be useful too.

For example, old base1 is defunct (no upstream). Fork becomes upstream and want to move to new organization without copying rest of the "baggage" to that new organization with it.

So yes, you understand correctly 👍

[wxiaoguang]

Thank you for confirming. Sounds no problem.

So is it a feature request, or the feature you are working on?

[AdamMajer]

I will not be working on this for at least 2 weeks. Then if no one gets to it, I guess I'll work on it then 😉