Update the project settings so only workspace administrators have access. This prevents regular users from accidentally interacting with old code.
| Use Case | Recommended? | |----------|---------------| | Completed client project | ✅ Yes | | Deprecated internal tool | ✅ Yes | | Temporary freeze (e.g., legal hold) | ✅ Yes | | Merged/migrated codebase | ✅ Yes (archive old one) | | Replacing with new project | ✅ Yes |
Active projects are monitored. Maintainers apply dependency updates to fix CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures). "Zombie" projects—those that are inactive but still open for pushing—are a security risk. A developer might accidentally push a configuration file containing secrets to an unmonitored legacy repo. Archiving enforces a barrier. If a developer must fix a bug in an archived repo, they must first unarchive it—a conscious action that alerts administrators (via audit logs) that activity is resuming in a legacy zone.
Bitbucket Data Center licensing is often tied to the number of active nodes or the size of the indexed data. While archiving does not reduce the raw disk usage (the Git objects remain on disk), it reduces the load on the database and indexing services. By archiving legacy projects, you prevent the system from spending CPU cycles checking for hooks or merging capabilities on dead code.