Source: own illustration
In June 2027, RWTH’s current GitLab service will be migrated to the new state-wide service in North Rhine-Westphalia, git.nrw. In this blog post, we’ll give you an overview of the reasons behind the service discontinuation and explain what you need to do now to migrate your projects.
Background on the Discontinuation
As part of the “Software Engineering Services (GitLab)” (SES) service, the IT Center provides two GitLab instances:
- Git.rwth – Ultimate for Education – for academic studies and teaching or open-source projects.
- Git-ce – Community Edition – suitable for technical or organizational use cases.
In addition to SES, the git.nrw service is provided. git.nrw offers RWTH Aachen University a broader range of features that were not available in git.rwth due to licensing restrictions. git.nrw will be available to all universities in the DH-NRW network and simplifies collaboration across university boundaries. By inviting guests, cooperation with non-NRW universities is also ensured.
To ensure a stable and efficient support structure while keeping the transition as seamless as possible for users, we are phasing out git.rwth first, followed by git-ce. The exact timing for the migration of git-ce will be determined at a later date. As soon as a specific date is set, we will provide advance notice well in advance.
Shutdown Process
On June 2, 2026, a one-year migration phase for git.rwth begins. During the migration phase, all repositories and groups must be migrated independently by the project managers. Data from git.rwth can be migrated to git.nrw or an alternative (such as GitHub.com or GitLab.com).
On January 4, 2027, the phased shutdown of git.rwth will begin. At that point, no new projects can be created and no new users can be added. Existing projects will remain available and can be used as before.
The migration phase ends on June 1, 2027. By then, users must have migrated their projects and groups to another GitLab instance.
After a brief read-only phase, during which users will have read-only access to their projects, git.rwth will be permanently shut down on July 1, 2027, and the data will be deleted.
git.nrw as an alternative GitLab instance
We recommend migrating to git.nrw. Together with four other universities, RWTH Aachen University is working as the consortium leader on the joint provision of this new service. Members of RWTH and the other four universities, as well as universities already participating, can use the service immediately; all other universities in the DH.NRW will join starting in August 2026.
Git.nrw is characterized by higher performance and is designed for large numbers of users, promising better performance and stability.
The use of GitHub accounts is not possible for git.nrw.
Any questions?
To provide you with the best possible support during the migration, we have compiled the following information for you:
- Detailed information about the transition from git.rwth to git.nrw is available on our IT Center Help documentation portal.
- Instructions for migrating GitLab projects.
- Consultation hours for the transition from git.rwth-aachen.de to git.nrw.
- Personal exchange for the git.nrw community in the git.nrw Coffee.
- Regular updates on DH.NRW projects via the git.nrw mailing list.
You can find a current overview of the ongoing migration at any time via the status message portal.
Further information can be found on the git.nrw website and in a previous blog post.
Responsible for the content of this article are Hedda Faber, Janin Jussen und Miriam Petry.
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