The token expiry check read response headers that an earlier, unrelated
request had left behind in module state. Its correctness depended on call
order that nothing but a comment enforced, so inserting or reordering a
request would have silently checked the wrong response, or none at all.
The exit code had the mirrored problem: any function in the call tree could
raise a shared error count, so nothing at the top level revealed which steps
could contribute to a failing run.
Both now travel as return values. The ordering constraint becomes a data
dependency the interpreter enforces instead of a convention the next reader
has to know about.
Gitea pull mirrors preserve Git refs but leave release notes and uploaded artifacts outside the backup. Without a separate synchronization path, restoring a repository would still depend on GitHub for important release context and binaries.
Andre