I have a website project that was built with Angular several years ago. Now that I have more experience, especially with React, I want to rewrite much of it using a different framework. The core functionality and purpose of the site would remain mostly the same, but the implementation would change significantly. Should I keep working in the existing repository or create a new one? What factors usually determine whether a rewrite belongs in the same repository or starts as a separate project?
3 Answers
Keeping the repository also lets you demonstrate that you can handle a real migration. In professional development, projects are often moved between frameworks, languages, databases, or architectures instead of being discarded and rebuilt from nothing. Planning the transition, preserving functionality, and moving users safely are valuable skills, even if the rewrite itself involves writing a lot of new code.
I’d keep the existing repository if it’s still fundamentally the same application. The commit history can be useful, and replacing a lot of implementation code doesn’t erase the fact that it’s the same project. You could work on a separate branch, such as a React rewrite, while keeping the current version stable, then merge it once the replacement is ready. If the project has version numbers, this would reasonably be treated as a major version, like 2.0.
Starting a new repository is mainly useful when the project’s purpose or business requirements have changed substantially, or when you’re creating a genuinely separate product. If the core functionality is staying the same, a framework migration alone usually isn’t enough reason to split the history. If you do start over, archive the old project and clearly point people to its replacement.
That makes sense. I hadn’t considered the migration itself as something worth showing, but handling a framework change while preserving the application’s behavior is different from simply starting a brand-new project.