Accidentally retired repo name when transferring to an Organization

[Maker-Lab-Kids]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

Body

I think this is a bug in behavior if not the help file. I searched first for how to move a repo to and organization where I want to keep the same path. that is userName/repoName ---> orgName/repoName where the userName==orgName. And the advice in the help was litterally this:

If your goal is to keep using the original personal-account path for the organization, the supported approach is:

Rename your personal account to a different username first.

So that's what I did. I renamed my personal account. I created an organization with the same name as the previous name for my personal account. Then I tried to transfer the repo and was told that the name had been retired. When I searched for help, I found the same bad advice again - rename your person account first. That does not resolve the problem - that caused the problem. So I think the help advice is definitely wrong... but the real question is, is there any way to keep the same path (orgName/repoName). There were no forks, follows, favorites or anything. I was just creating this myself and realized it should be an organization not a personal account. Now I stuck. Any advice (other than "Rename your personal account to a different username first.") would be appreciated.

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[RizgarOzan]

The rename → new org → transfer order is what the docs recommend, so you didn't do anything weird. What bit you is namespace retirement: when you rename an account, GitHub permanently retires OLD-OWNER/REPO-NAME for any public repo that had more than 100 clones or more than 100 Actions uses in the week before the rename, or that contains a Marketplace action. Forks and stars don't factor in. I'm not sure whether CI checkouts count as clones, but Insights → Traffic shows the clone numbers if you want to check.

So orgName/repoName is blocked and there's nothing on your side that releases it. Two options:

• transfer it under a different repo name (rename it in your personal account first, then transfer)
• open a ticket at https://support.github.com/contact and ask if they can lift the retirement for that name. The docs call it permanent so I wouldn't count on it, but it's your own repo, so worth asking.

https://docs.github.com/en/account-and-profile/reference/username-reference#changing-your-username
https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/transferring-a-repository

[acklenx]

Thanks for the response! I'll try both. I didn't know Action uses was a thing. I'm pretty sure all the activity has been me alone. Thanks again for providing some insight. I even appreciate the link to support - lots of people say contact support, but it's not obvious how to do that (the Contact link in the footer doesn't take you right there, but yours does).

Thanks!

[Maker-Lab-Kids]

Thank you!