# Procedures for package renaming, deletion and deprecation

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [October 10, 2020, 12:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108 "2020-10-10T12:51:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 16\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 12:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/1 "2020-10-10T12:51:34Z")

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I want to highlight a recent experience regarding this subject and offer some criticism and suggestions in the spirit of improving the Julia ecosystem.

A few days ago I registered a new websocket (generic tech term) library, calling it `Websocket`. This was automerged into the General Registry after the 3 day wait for new packages.

I was subsequently asked by a registry moderator to rename this package because of potential confusion with the pre-existing `WebSockets` package. Fair enough, but this brings me to:

> ### Suggestion 1
> 
> Update the [package naming guidelines](https://julialang.github.io/Pkg.jl/v1/creating-packages/#Package-naming-guidelines-1) to explicitly state this kind of scenario.

I chose the new name `SimpleWebsockets` for my package, created a new Github Repo, updated tests, documentation and CI pipelines and re-registered under the new name. The mods were helpful in getting this merged without the 3 day wait, and it got included into the [General Registry](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General/tree/master/S/SimpleWebsockets)

I was however unable to solicit clear guidance on how to effectively deprecate the old package . Upon trying to merge a deprecation notice into the old `Websocket` package, it became clear to me that `Websocket` has been [deleted from the General Registry](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General/pull/22681). Again, fair enough, but brings me to:

### Criticism

- WebSockets, Websocket and SimpleWebsockets are now [ALL listed](https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages?q=websocket) on JuliaHub.
- Pkg.add(“Websocket”) fails without useful information about the alternative.
- compathelper will give no future advice to users who may already have installed `Websocket`

Given that the original purpose of renaming the package was to avoid confusion, I feel that the process has had the opposite outcome, and sowed the seeds for more confusion. This brings me to:

> ### Suggestion 2
> 
> 1. That Juliahub does not list packages that have been removed from General Registry
> 2. That there is a `Deprecated` Registry where packages go to die, but reserve the UID and name in the ecosystem.
> 3. That `Pkg.add` will give a deprecation notice and helpful alternative suggestion if a user tries to add a deprecated package.
> 4. That compathelper will notify users as and when a dependency becomes deprecated.
> 5. That a well defined procedure for package deprecation is agreed and documented.

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**Author:** ![ericphanson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ericphanson/32/215186_2.png) [@ericphanson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ericphanson)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 1:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/2 "2020-10-10T13:37:44Z")

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> [@citkane](#):
>
> > ### Suggestion 1
> > 
> > Update the [package naming guidelines](https://julialang.github.io/Pkg.jl/v1/creating-packages/#Package-naming-guidelines-1) to explicitly state this kind of scenario.

I just put up a PR to add name-similarity checks to help prevent automerge in this kind of situation, so hopefully that will help this part: [https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/RegistryCI.jl/pull/274](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/RegistryCI.jl/pull/274).

That doesn’t address the guidelines in the Pkg docs though, do you think it would be valuable to also have advise there to choose a name sufficiently different from existing names?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/3 "2020-10-10T13:49:20Z")

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> [@ericphanson](#):
>
> That doesn’t address the guidelines in the Pkg docs though, do you think it would be valuable to also have advise there to choose a name sufficiently different from existing names?

Yes, personally I think this is a better approach than enforcing it through code. In my scenario, I had read the naming guidelines before starting work on my package. If it was made clear there as a community standard, I would have named my package differently from the outset avoiding the confusion and saving myself an afternoons retrospective work.

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**Author:** ![ericphanson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ericphanson/32/215186_2.png) [@ericphanson](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ericphanson)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/4 "2020-10-10T13:57:10Z")

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Ok, that makes sense. If you or anyone else wants to give improving the naming guidelines a try, the place to do it is here: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/blob/master/docs/src/creating-packages.md](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/blob/master/docs/src/creating-packages.md). (And for anyone who isn’t familiar with GitHub, it’s very easy to do; just click the pencil in the top right of that page, make your changes, and then click propose changes, and then create pull request).

> enforcing it through code

FYI the automerge guidelines are only guidelines, and are not enforced as rules. They are chosen to be conservative so that automatically merged packages should be “definitely fine”, but not meeting them doesn’t mean the package cannot be merged (manually). I only bring this up because they are commonly misinterpreted as hard rules; I do get your point that it would be nicer to know about this kind of thing well in advance rather than at registration time.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 2:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/5 "2020-10-10T14:09:46Z")

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[https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/pull/2098/files](https://github.com/JuliaLang/Pkg.jl/pull/2098/files)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 10, 2020, 5:37pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/6 "2020-10-10T17:37:06Z")

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> [@citkane](#):
>
> WebSockets, Websocket and SimpleWebsockets are now [ALL listed](https://juliahub.com/ui/Packages?q=websocket) on JuliaHub.

I manually removed the `Websocket` repo from my Registrator app, so I will check in again tomorrow if it is still showing on Juliahub.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2020, 9:30am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/7 "2020-10-12T09:30:01Z")

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> [@citkane](#):
>
> I will check in again tomorrow if it is still showing on Juliahub.

Still on Juliahub.

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**Author:** ![avik](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/avik/32/17_2.png) [@avik](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/avik)\
**Post date:** [October 12, 2020, 1:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/8 "2020-10-12T13:21:11Z")

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Yeah, unfortunately, Juliahub’s indexing code cannot handle deletions yet. This was an edge case that hadn’t been considered. We’ll have to delete this from various indexes and databases now manually, so I’ll ask for your patience, sorry.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/9 "2020-10-14T15:42:11Z")

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Thanks @avik

`citkane/Websocket` is now gone from Juliahub.

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**Author:** ![mthelm85](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mthelm85/32/224164_2.png) [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:26pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/10 "2020-10-14T16:26:44Z")

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I’m also curious to know what the process is for removing/deprecating a package…?

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**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/11 "2020-10-14T16:38:39Z")

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I don’t believe that it is yet well defined, and I am open to correction on that.

Seems that the good norm is that once a package has an ID and name, it should never be removed to avoid seven circles of ecosytem repository hell.

In my particular instance that prompted this post, my package WAS deleted, but the chaos has now been manually stopped before it reaches further down.

My suggestions at the top of this post may be simplistic, but I feel that it should be feasible to providing some way not to DELETE a package, but tag it as deprecated which hides it from Juliahub and invokes helpful messaging from `Pkg` and [compathelper](https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/CompatHelper.jl).

edit:  
Maybe Juliahub could also have some “name-checker” function to test if a name is available and suitable before a package creator starts works.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mthelm85](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mthelm85/32/224164_2.png) [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:43pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/12 "2020-10-14T16:43:18Z")

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Yeah, I just think it would be a pity to not be able to free up good package names when they have been deprecated for some period of time. I only have 1 package in the registry but it’s kind of a crappy package to be honest and I’ve thought about removing it and I’d hate for someone else to not be able to create a package with the same name if I can’t remove it. I suppose I could always just make them an owner/maintainer of the GitHub repo but what if a repo owner isn’t responsive?

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**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/13 "2020-10-14T16:45:47Z")

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I agree, but as much as I hate pragmatism, I think that the id/name reservation is pragmatically necessary.

Maybe the namepool could be purged between major releases, or maybe there is a strategy I am not seeing?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 4:50pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/14 "2020-10-14T16:50:39Z")

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Just to clarify the situation as I see it:

Somebody creates package `BandTupintheair`, which is rubbish. A few people use it as dependencies regardless.

It gets deleted, and a new package with the same name is created. The users of the original package update to the new version and things go horribly wrong. They are now unable to roll back to the previous version and the world is seriously broken…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mthelm85](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mthelm85/32/224164_2.png) [@mthelm85](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mthelm85)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 5:16pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/15 "2020-10-14T17:16:01Z")

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> [@citkane](#):
>
> They are now unable to roll back to the previous version and the world is seriously broken…

Maybe there could be a separate registry of deprecated packages?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![citkane](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/citkane/32/17595_2.png) [@citkane](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/citkane)\
**Post date:** [October 14, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/procedures-for-package-renaming-deletion-and-deprecation/48108/16 "2020-10-14T17:21:00Z")

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> [@citkane](#):
>
> ### Suggestion 2
> 
> 1. That Juliahub does not list packages that have been removed from General Registry
> 2. That there is a `Deprecated` Registry where packages go to die, but reserve the UID and name in the ecosystem.

Suggested already 😀

This has potential for complication, and I feel that it is firstly important to just be able to deprecate.