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Comment by jka | Hacker News Reader

> You can always publish your creation on your website or wherever.

What you're suggesting wouldn't solve the problem for critical packages, though; the effect would be similar to yesterday's package unpublish issue[1] (all users of the package would have to update their dependency references despite no change in the content of the code).

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026624

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No, the issue yesterday is that people had to go in manually to fix their CI builds, etc. That's simply not necessary if you don't update the version and yanking is disallowed (which it should be).

After that, if people want to at some point update to a newer version of the package, yes, they will have to adjust.

Hrm, fair point. Although migrating 'backwards-compatibly' like that could leave a lot of people in the cold if-and-when a security update for the package is released (and we're talking about critical packages here, at least for now).

How about you 1) leave old versions in place on the package index, 2) declare that you will not be providing further updates to the package through the index because of this issue, 3) go publish your stuff on your website or an alternate package index?

So what? Users can do that if the maintainer chooses to move hosting.

Sure, accepted. That'd be a disruptive change, though, and I think that a better approach is possible.

The suggestion regarding separation of (immutable) packages and policy in the article could provide some hints in that direction.

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