Absolutely, you can use GitLab's official REST API to batch delete all your repositories safely. Let me walk you through the process step by step—just make sure you double-check everything before running any deletion commands, since this action can't be undone!

Prerequisites #

• A GitLab account with ownership access to the repositories you want to delete.
• A Personal Access Token (PAT) with the right permissions (we'll create this next).
• The jq tool installed (to parse JSON responses; skip this if you prefer manual parsing, but it makes things way easier).

Step 1: Create a Personal Access Token (PAT) #

1. Log into your GitLab account, click your avatar in the top-right corner, and select Settings.
2. From the left sidebar, go to Access Tokens.
3. Enter a token name (e.g., "Batch Delete Repos"), set an expiration date (for security), and check the following scopes:
   • api (required for API access)
   • delete_repository (required to delete repositories)
4. Click Create personal access token, then copy the generated token immediately—you won't see it again!

Step 2: Fetch all your repository IDs #

First, let's get a list of all the repository IDs you own. Run this curl command (replace YOUR_PAT with your token, and adjust the GitLab URL if you're using a self-hosted instance):

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: YOUR_PAT" "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects?owned=true&per_page=100" | jq '.[] | .id'

• owned=true ensures we only pull repositories you own (skip this if you want to delete repos you're a member of, but adjust the scope accordingly).
• per_page=100 fetches up to 100 repos at once. If you have more than 100, add &page=2 (and increment the page number) to get the rest, or use a script to handle pagination automatically.
• Add &include_subgroups=true if you want to include repositories in subgroups you own.

Step 3: Batch delete repositories with a script #

Create a simple shell script to loop through the repository IDs and delete each one. Save this as delete_repos.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# Replace these values with your own
PAT="YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN"
GITLAB_URL="https://gitlab.com"

# Fetch all owned project IDs (add &include_subgroups=true to include subgroup repos)
project_ids=$(curl --silent --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: $PAT" "$GITLAB_URL/api/v4/projects?owned=true&per_page=100" | jq -r '.[] | .id')

# Loop through each ID and delete the project
for id in $project_ids; do
    echo "Attempting to delete project ID: $id"
    curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: $PAT" "$GITLAB_URL/api/v4/projects/$id"
    echo -e "\n"
done

Then make the script executable and run it:

chmod +x delete_repos.sh
./delete_repos.sh

Critical Notes & Warnings #

• Backup first!: Deleting a repository is permanent—GitLab doesn't have a trash recovery feature for deleted repos. Export any important data before proceeding.
• Test with one repo first: To avoid accidental mass deletion, test the delete command on a single repository first:

  curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: YOUR_PAT" "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/YOUR_TEST_REPO_ID"
  

• Self-hosted GitLab: If you're using a self-hosted instance, replace https://gitlab.com with your instance's URL (e.g., https://gitlab.yourcompany.com).
• Pagination handling: If you have more than 100 repos, modify the script to loop through pages until no more results are returned. For example:

  page=1
  while true; do
      project_ids=$(curl --silent --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: $PAT" "$GITLAB_URL/api/v4/projects?owned=true&per_page=100&page=$page" | jq -r '.[] | .id')
      if [ -z "$project_ids" ]; then
          break
      fi
      for id in $project_ids; do
          echo "Deleting project ID: $id"
          curl --request DELETE --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: $PAT" "$GITLAB_URL/api/v4/projects/$id"
          echo -e "\n"
      done
      page=$((page+1))
  done
  

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Harsh Patel