If I move Jira issues from one project to another, what will happen to my GitHub info?

Question

This may be a non-existent issue, but I have looked for community Q&A about it, and cannot find the answer...and I do not want to test by "doing" given the potential ramifications.

I am planning on bulk migrating issues out of one project into another, new, project. The reasoning for this is to consolidate two separate projects into one. We are actively working in both projects.

Each project is integrated with GitHub, and we are adding the Issue Key to the branch name, currently.

When I move issues into a new project the Issue Key will change (e.g. AAA-111 > BBB-888), or so I am assuming it will. Will this break the link from GitHub to the issue/will I lose historical GitHub integrations to the issues? If yes, is there a way to retain the integration, so the data regarding previous PRs and commits is not lost?

Laura-Nicoleta Iacob · Answer

Hello, what about archiving the old project? Does this break the redirect? Thank you

Andy Heinzer · Answer

Hi Mackenzie,

I understand that you are looking to move a number of issues between projects in Jira and are curious to understand how the development data (pull requests, commits, branches, etc) will be affected by this move.

I don't think you have anything to worry about here.  It is true that moving issues between projects will change the issue key of that issue, and that the issue key is how that development data is being associated with that issue.  However when you move an issue in Jira, behind the scenes Jira leaves a redirect so that requests to the old issue key, (AAA-111 in your example) will automatically redirect to the new issue key (BBB-888).  The development data will still appear on those issues when moved.

So in general, I think you will be fine here.  However you should be aware that if you plan to re-use the old project key AAA for a different project (either renaming an existing project or creating a new one with that project key) you will effectively break this redirect for all issues that used to have an AAA issue key.   So that is one way that this commit data could be lost or even misdirected.

I hope that helps to explain the behavior and the potential pitfalls here.

Andy