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A meta repository that lists versions reviewed by a trusted group of people? It would ad latency to bug fixes and limit the amount of available libraries, but w
by josefx 5y ago
A meta repository that lists versions reviewed by a trusted group of people? It would ad latency to bug fixes and limit the amount of available libraries, but would prevent single developers from taking down the ecosystem on a whim.
- irtigor 5y agoThat is more or less what Arch Linux does. There are oficial repos (core and extra) maintained by Arch Linux developers, an unsupported packages collection (AUR) where anyone can upload a package recipe and an intermediary between those two called community repository that is mantained by trusted users.
- WorldMaker 5y agoThis is what `npm audit` and GitHub "DependendaBot" are both doing (originally in parallel with their own meta-databases, though now that GitHub owns npm things are lot tighter integrated, it sounds like). Admittedly: A) Both of these meta-repository tools are reactive rather than proactive: they flag bad versions rather than known good versions. B) It doesn't take too many HN searches to find people don't trust `npm audit` or DependaBot either because both have provided a lot of false positives and false negatives over the years. C) If someone does trust one or both, often the easiest course of action is to automate the acceptance of their recommendations and just blindly accept them leaving us about where we started and just blurring the lines between what is repository and what is "meta-repository". (Even the "Bot" in DependaBot's name implies this acceptance automation is its natural state, and the bot's primary "interface" is automated Pull Requests).