composer/packagist — Issue #109: Should remind "no forks, no testing" on package submission (stronger warning on fork detection)
Author: simensen
Created: 2012-03-06 22:56:08+00:00
State: open

In order to prevent people from failing to RTFM and posting one-off forks and/or testing packages, we can provide a gentle reminder on the submit page along with a link or two. We can also say, "this is important because deleting packages is a very special case and not something we do lightly" or some such. Whatever wording makes the most sense and is not confusing. :)

We can also hook into the specialized VCS drivers (say, GitHub's) and see if we can detect whether or not the repository is authoritative or not. (i.e., if it is a GitHub fork, it is more than likely not authoritative) In this case, the follow up, "we've detected [vendor/package], si this correct?" prompt can also show a much more aggressive message like:

> This package looks to be a fork of another project. Are you sure you want to add this package? Remember, we take package removal very seriously so **do not** add forks unless you are planning to maintain this code for a very long time. If you want to test your package, you can define a VCS repository in your `composer.json` file. [link](http://getcomposer.org/doc/05-repositories)

This will not block forks from being submitted (as there are valid use cases where a fork makes sense) but it should hopefully give people yet one more chance to think about what they are doing.