Migration

TL;DR

If you were using sqlite (NixOS default), copy your Gitea database over the auto-generated blank Forgejo database with cp /var/lib/forgejo/data/gitea.db /var/lib/forgejo/forgejo.db.

Complete Instructions

I decided to switch from self-hosting Gitea to Forgejo for reasons. To start, I followed official migration instrucitons but did a few things differently on account of running NixOS:

1. systemctl stop gitea
2. Do NOT copy app.ini (it isn’t there, it’s part of your system nix config and will be built automatically)
3. Perform data migration as noted
4. Switch services.gitea section in your system config to services.forgejo.
5. nixos-rebuild switch

After doing this, I could access the interface but my existing users and repos were missing. The reason I’m writing this article is to let you know that you need to copy /var/lib/forgejo/data/gitea.db to /var/lib/forgejo/data/forgejo.db. There will be a forgejo.db file in place without your data.

To continue with the steps:

4. systemctl stop forgejo
5. cp /var/lib/forgejo/data/gitea.db /var/lib/forgejo/forgejo.db
6. systemctl start forgejo

If your setup is the same as mine:

• you should be able to access the web UI
• your Gitea username/password should work
• your previously existing repos should show up on the “Explore” page

The last thing I did was select the default Forgejo theme in my users settings.

Hopefully this saves you a few minutes.