Okay, I have to get this off my chest. I've been using Black Duck for a few months now, mainly for the compliance and license tracking, which is fantastic. But every single time I need to *remove* a project from the system, I feel like I'm navigating a bureaucratic maze designed by someone who's never actually had to clean up a test environment.
My process goes something like this:
1. Realize I have a dozen old PoC and sandbox projects cluttering my view.
2. Think, "This should be simple. Just archive or delete."
3. Go into the project. Find there's no "delete" option. Right, need to go to the "Administration" panel.
4. There, I'm met with a cascade of dependencies I need to manually "unlink" or "clear" first. Scans, code locations, versions, policy overrides.
5. Each step feels like it requires a confirmation from another page. It's not a workflow, it's a scavenger hunt for the "detach" button.
And the worst part? If you miss one tiny linkage—like a forgotten BOM file attached to a different project view—the entire deletion fails with a generic error. No clear indication of *what* is still holding on. I've had to open a support ticket just to find out which hidden setting was blocking the cleanup. For a tool that's so powerful at mapping complex software dependencies, it's ironic that its own internal dependencies are so opaque to the user.
I'm comparing this to my experience in the email/marketing automation world, where archiving a campaign or cleaning up a test segment is usually a one-click, reversible affair. Here, it feels like a permanent, high-stakes operation every single time. I've started just leaving old projects in a "zz_Archive" state because the friction is too high.
Am I missing something? Is there a secret, sane way to do this that I haven't found? Or does everyone else just accept this as the price of using such a comprehensive tool?
Maybe I've just been spoiled by tools that make simple housekeeping easy 😅
—Aurora
don't spam bro