Description

After upgrading Gitea from 1.25.x to 1.26.x, the repo-archive unique queue can contain jobs serialized with the old ArchiveRequest JSON shape. Workers on 1.26 fail to unmarshal those items and log errors like:

.../queue/workerqueue.go:155:(*WorkerPoolQueue).unmarshal() [E] Failed to unmarshal item from queue "repo-archive":
json: unable to unmarshal into Go convert.Conversion within "/Repo/Units/0/Config":
cannot derive concrete type for nil interface with finite type set

Root cause

ArchiveRequest changed between releases (see #35514 / subpath archive work in 1.26):

v1.25 (services/repository/archiver/archiver.go):

type ArchiveRequest struct {
    RepoID   int64
    Type     git.ArchiveType
    CommitID string
    archiveRefShortName string
}

v1.26+:

type ArchiveRequest struct {
    Repo     *repo_model.Repository  // includes Units[].Config (interface types)
    Type     repo_model.ArchiveType
    CommitID string
    Paths    []string
    archiveRefShortName string
}

The repo-archive queue persists JSON via WorkerPoolQueue. Jobs enqueued under 1.25 are not compatible with the 1.26 struct, especially Repo.Units[0].Config where convert.Conversion cannot be derived from stored JSON.

Impact

• Queue workers repeatedly log unmarshal errors for stale items.
• With STREAM_ARCHIVES=false, full-repo archive API requests can hang in Await() if the unique set still thinks a job exists but nothing processes successfully.
• Workaround: Site Administration → Monitor → Queues → repo-archive → Remove all items (and optionally clear stuck repo_archiver rows with status = 0).

Steps to reproduce

1. Run Gitea 1.25.x with STREAM_ARCHIVES=false (or otherwise enqueue full-repo archive jobs into repo-archive).
2. Trigger at least one full-repo archive download so jobs sit in the persistent queue (level/redis).
3. Upgrade to 1.26.x without flushing/clearing the repo-archive queue.
4. Observe unmarshal errors in logs; full-repo archive HTTP requests may hang.

Expected behavior

One of:

• Queue is automatically invalidated / migrated on upgrade when ArchiveRequest schema changes.
• Upgrade docs explicitly instruct clearing repo-archive before/after upgrade.
• Queue payload stores a version-stable minimal struct (e.g. RepoID + CommitID + Paths) instead of full *Repository.

Actual behavior

Stale 1.25 queue payloads break 1.26 workers; errors repeat until an admin manually clears the queue.

Gitea Version

Observed on 1.26.2 after upgrade from 1.25.x. Still present in 1.26.4 (archiver.go unchanged). Not fixed on main as of June 2026.

Environment

• Queue: default persistent unique queue (repo-archive)
• STREAM_ARCHIVES=false forces queued full-repo archives (subpath ?path=... streams on 1.26 and bypasses the queue)

Related issues

• Can't download release archives #27945 (stuck repo-archive queue — workaround: clear queue)
• Queue unexpected type conversion #26843 (JSON queue marshal/unmarshal limitations)
• Unable to Download ZIP/TAR.GZ Files from Web UI #33862 (infinite archive polling — cleared 1M+ queue items)

These do not document the 1.25 → 1.26 ArchiveRequest breaking schema change specifically.

Suggested fix

• On startup after upgrade, detect incompatible repo-archive items and drop them (or reset the queue), or
• Revert queue payload to a minimal serializable struct and load Repository in the worker handler.