Moved ticket forwarding: safe after deletion of prior project?

[Travis Parker]

I've created a new project to replace an old one, and moved all tickets over. Now I'd like to delete the old project, but I want to know for sure that the existing redirects will work.

Links to old project tickets are spread all across confluence, google docs, email threads, etc, so the automatic forwarding of jira.mycompany.com/browse/OLD-xxx to jira.mycompany.com/browse/NEW-yyy is invaluable. My concern is that those forwards will cease functioning if I delete the OLD project.

Is that fear unfounded?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Safe, yes, but only because Jira will not let you do it.

If you delete a Jira project, Jira does not actually delete it, it keeps a minimal record of it.  If you try to re-use a key that has been used, it will tell you that you've already used that key and refuse to create it, even though the key might look "free".

This is just in case you have moved issues out of the project before deleting it, but also to inform people with incoming links as you've described.

Imagine a simple case where you create ABC-123, link it all over the place and then move it to project XYZ, taking number 345.  As you already know, Jira will redirect incoming hits on https://jira/browse/ABC-123 to https://jira/browse/XYZ-345

If you could kill off and then re-use project ABC, you run into a massive problem.  When your new ABC users reach the 123rd issue, you now have a valid ABC-123.  So what does Jira do when someone hits https://jira/browse/ABC-123 ?  Do they mean the old issue that's now XYZ-345, or the current ABC-123?  No way to tell. 

If you're willing to do a bit of database trickery, you can reuse a project key.  But as soon as you do that, all your "forwards" cease to work.