werkator/docs/prs/2026-09-04-PR#21-gitea-default-clone-url.md

WARNING: This document describes only the change applied in this PR. It may already be outdated once the next PR is merged. Historic PR-documentation is not maintained along with new PRs — treat it as a snapshot, not as current documentation.

The Problem

The repository's home is https://git.javagil.de/mi/werkator.git since the move to the own Gitea instance, but tools/remote still defaulted WERKATOR_REPO_URL to the GitHub mirror.

The mih09 production instance was cloned from that mirror and consequently watched a main that nobody pushes to any more: it kept reporting the last GitHub state as green while three merged pull requests sat unbuilt on the real main. The failure that started this — a flaky test already fixed on Gitea's main — could not be re-verified live, because the instance had no way to see the fix.

Non-Goals

• The existing clone on mih09 is not touched by this change; its remote was repointed by hand (git remote set-url), and repo-init skips an existing clone.
• The generic placeholder URLs in docs/deployment.md stay as they are — they describe cloning any watched repository, not werkator's own.
• No decision about mirroring to GitHub; the mirror simply stops being the source an instance builds from.

The Solution

REPO_URL in tools/remote defaults to the Gitea URL, and the usage comment says so.

The value stays overridable via WERKATOR_REPO_URL in the instance's env file, so an installation that deliberately watches a different remote is unaffected. Anonymous HTTPS works against Gitea exactly as it did against GitHub, so no deploy key or token is involved.

Note that pull requests opened via AGit-Flow create no branch in Gitea, so an instance watching this remote sees main only — branch builds require pushing real branches.