Panchangam Reference

GitHub Pages retention and rollback ​

Status: the pre-activation backup and rollback were exercised on 2026-08-27. The original action-based activation was rolled back after the live check found that it removed layered artifacts. The corrected design compacts the complete published tree in a dedicated workflow instead of orphaning partial deploys.

Why history is bounded ​

gh-pages is a publication branch, not an audit archive. Its source inputs, calculation rules and tests live on master; generated output can be reproduced. The five content workflows remain layered deployments with keep_files: true and no orphan option. A separate serialized compactor reads the current Pages tip and tree through GitHub's Git data API, creates a parentless commit from the exact same tree, rechecks that the branch did not move, and then updates only gh-pages. This bounds history without asking a partial publisher to reconstruct files owned by the other workflows.

Measured baseline — 2026-08-27 ​

The local repository reported a 96.58 MiB pack across all local refs. A clean, aggressively packed rehearsal containing master, release tags and gh-pages measured 77.96 MiB; the same repository without Pages history measured only 2.36 MiB.

gh-pages contained 148 deployment commits from 2026-06-10 through 2026-08-26. Its live tip was 0c8242ed4818838cba60f2d8ef41493eb1e2cd1f; the exact live tree af11e9b10c100e0ed8ea9036c203158727cca581 contained 317 files and 90,103,569 bytes:

Live categoryFilesBytesRequired retention
Panchangam feeds under feeds/22084,606,415Keep every currently published ICS feed and current per-city Lagna JSON. The feed horizon is the product contract.
Built assets223,496,777Keep the current production build only.
Rasi Phalalu681,790,357The UI reads today only. Retain a short operational window; deleting older live files is a separate approval-gated change.
Root JSON123,081Keep the current Gochara snapshot only.
Other (index.html, CNAME, etc.)6186,939Keep the complete current site shell and custom-domain files.

Across historical Pages commits, 1,434 unique blobs occupied 813,166,792 uncompressed bytes. Panchangam feed history accounted for 801,319,230 bytes, so repeated generated feeds—not source history—were the dominant cause.

Rehearsal result ​

A bare clone containing only master, tags and gh-pages was used; the live repository was untouched.

  1. A complete backup bundle of the original Pages tip 0c8242ed4818838cba60f2d8ef41493eb1e2cd1f was created and verified.
  2. A parentless commit was created from the exact live tree af11e9b10c100e0ed8ea9036c203158727cca581.
  3. git diff confirmed that the old and new commits had identical trees; CNAME still contained panchangam.astrochaganti.com.
  4. After unreachable objects were pruned and repacked, pack size fell from 77.96 MiB to 15.38 MiB, an 80.3% reduction.
  5. Rollback from the 76 MiB backup bundle restored the exact original tip and tree, and git fsck --full --no-dangling passed.

Live activation finding and correction ​

The first approved deployment tested the pinned peaceiris/actions-gh-pages v4.1.0 combination of keep_files: true and force_orphan: true. The workflow completed successfully, but the resulting root commit contained only the landing build: existing feeds, Gochara, Lagna and Rasi Phalalu files were absent. The live check caught the loss immediately and the verified bundle restored the exact original tip 0c8242ed4818838cba60f2d8ef41493eb1e2cd1f and tree af11e9b10c100e0ed8ea9036c203158727cca581.

The action's force-orphan path creates a new repository and copies only the current publish_dir; it does not clone the publication branch first. The corrected workflow therefore performs compaction independently, after all layered content deployments, and refuses to update the ref if the live tip or tree validation changes.

The first live deployment may not immediately reduce GitHub-reported storage; unreachable server objects are reclaimed on GitHub's schedule. New clones stop requesting the old Pages history once the ref becomes orphaned.

Live artifact checks ​

Before the rehearsal, each canonical URL returned HTTP 200:

  • site root: https://panchangam.astrochaganti.com/
  • Panchangam feed: /feeds/hyderabad-drik.ics
  • Gochara: /gochara.json
  • Lagna: /feeds/hyderabad-lagna.json
  • Rasi Phalalu sample: /rasi_phalalu/2026-08-27.json

After the first approved live deployment, repeat those checks, confirm the CNAME file and compare the published tree manifest before removing any local backup.

Activation ​

Run these steps only with explicit owner approval:

bash
git fetch origin gh-pages
git branch backup/gh-pages-YYYYMMDD origin/gh-pages
git bundle create gh-pages-YYYYMMDD.bundle backup/gh-pages-YYYYMMDD
git bundle verify gh-pages-YYYYMMDD.bundle
git rev-parse origin/gh-pages origin/gh-pages^{tree}
git ls-tree -r --full-tree origin/gh-pages > gh-pages-YYYYMMDD.manifest

Store the backup bundle, tip/tree SHAs and manifest outside the repository. Merge the approved workflow change, manually run Compact GitHub Pages History, then verify:

bash
git fetch origin gh-pages
git rev-list --count origin/gh-pages
git show origin/gh-pages:CNAME

The commit count should be one. Verify the five live URLs above and inspect the site before accepting the deployment.

Rollback ​

If Pages content, feed URLs or the custom domain regress, restore from the backup bundle. Substitute the recorded compacted tip for <current-tip>:

bash
git fetch gh-pages-YYYYMMDD.bundle \
  refs/heads/backup/gh-pages-YYYYMMDD:refs/heads/restore-gh-pages
git push --force-with-lease=refs/heads/gh-pages:<current-tip> \
  origin refs/heads/restore-gh-pages:refs/heads/gh-pages

Then recheck the five URLs and CNAME. Do not delete the backup bundle until the bounded-history deployment has completed a normal scheduled cycle.