Transferring a Repository to an Organisation

🏢 This guide explains how to transfer a GitHub repository from a personal account to an organisation. While not required, this can help promote collaborative ownership and reduce barriers to contribution.

📦 Why Transfer to an Organisation?

Enables team-based permissions
Reduces visibility of individual ownership
Simplifies future collaboration and maintenance

You might want to transfer if you’re planning broader community involvement, long-term support, or a publication release.

🔁 Steps for Transferring a Repository

1. Prepare an Organisation and Team

Make sure you’re an admin of the destination GitHub organisation.
Create a team for maintainers (e.g., ifmeo-hamburg/seagliderOG1-maintainers).

2. Transfer the Repository

Go to Settings in your GitHub repo.
Scroll to Danger Zone and click Transfer Ownership.
Enter the organisation name and confirm.

3. Verify the Move

Go to the new repository URL under the organisation.
Check that all content moved:
- Issues
- Pull requests
- Branch protection rules

4. Reassign Roles

Visit Settings > Collaborators and Teams.
Ensure team members have appropriate roles (e.g., “Write” or “Maintain”).

5. Notify Collaborators

Let team members and contributors know the repo has moved.

⚙️ Post-Transfer Clean-up

🔗 Update Links

[ ] Update all internal links to the repo in:
- README.md
- docs/index.rst
- docs/source/conf.py
- Citation files (e.g. CITATION.cff → url: field)

📄 PyPI and Trusted Publisher (Later Step)

[ ] In PyPI settings, update the GitHub repository address.
[ ] Reconfigure trusted publisher settings for the new repo path.

🐍 Conda-forge (Later Step)

[ ] If distributing via conda-forge, update meta.yaml to match the new repo location.

📝 `pyproject.toml`

[ ] Update urls.repository and urls.documentation to the new GitHub URL.

👤 Final Step for Original Owner

If the repo started under your personal account (e.g., github.com/eleanorfrajka/seagliderOG1) and you want to keep working on it:

Fork the new repo from the organisation to your personal GitHub account.

✅ After transfer and cleanup, your repository is easier to maintain as a team project and better prepared for citation, publishing, and long-term support.