Not entirely the usual fare, but i figured some here would appreciate it
I often rag on the js/node/npm ecosystem for being utter garbage, and this post is a quite a full demonstration of many of the shortcomings and outright total design failures present in that space
The commenters on HN and lobste.rs are generally on the side of the package creators, with the view that NPM is run by GitHub, who is owned by Microsoft. All this is true, but it doesn’t follow from that that the NPM people are paid fuck-you money. I suspect they’re understaffed, and overworked, and that this stunt didn’t make them very happy.
Although in retrospect, not anticipating that some rando would try to depend on everything in the repository seems like a naive view on human nature.
there’s probably a few people trying this in every other language ritenao
guess we’ll find out in a few weeks!
I mean, do any other package managers work this way? Pypi disallows complete removal from the index to prevent malware namesquatting, but nothing in pypi as a tool requires dependencies exist or be functional.
not actually sure, but I look forward to someone finding out
I know pypi is a bit more responsive to issues (having seen it happen, and seen on irc how the people think about things). on the rest I haven’t really been close to things for a little while because reasons
android/dart seems to give me “google or someone will intervene” vibes. not sure about the wider maven ecosystem. the mental image of trying to deal with this particular problem in their usual suggested flows (which is extremely “click here and here in these 5 menus. we’ll only mention the places by name, fuck you getting circles or screenshots.”) strikes me as though it may cause a hundred million wails crying out at once