Gitea drops legacy versioning with major 28.0 release and adds audit logging, bot accounts

The open-source self-hosted Git platform Gitea has announced version 28.0, marking a significant milestone with the abandonment of its historical 1. prefix in version numbering. The update streamlines the project's version scheme while delivering substantial enhancements across security, developer workflows, and administrative capabilities. This change signals a maturation of the platform after years of incremental development under the previous 1.x numbering convention.

Key additions include robust audit logging, dedicated bot accounts, HTTPS deploy tokens, and administrator user impersonation tools for enhanced troubleshooting. The release also introduces code-owner approval rules and diff file filters to improve code review precision. A standout feature is the new actions queue view, which provides administrators with real-time visibility into running and queued CI/CD jobs, complete with owner, repository, and status filtering options. Workflow run lists now refresh automatically, and users can preview build artifacts, including text files, images, PDFs, and generated HTML reports, directly in their browsers without downloading.

Security fixes are bundled in this release, though detailed disclosure will be delayed approximately one week to allow organizations time to upgrade. Additional improvements span API expansions for project boards and workflow run management, along with package registry enhancements supporting npm deprecation notices, Helm chart provenance files, and comprehensive package listing through new administrative endpoints.