/METADATA.jl

Metadata for registered Julia packages.

Primary LanguageJulia

This is the official METADATA repo for the Julia package manager. See manual section on packages for how to use the package manager to install and develop packages.

Please note our current policies for accepting entries into METADATA.jl:

  1. Registered packages must have an Open Source Initiative approved license, clearly marked via a LICENSE.md, LICENSE, COPYING or similarly named file in the package repository. Packages that wrap proprietary libraries are acceptable if the licenses of those libraries permit open source distribution of the Julia wrapper code.

  2. New packages submitted for registration must have at least one tagged version.

  3. The lowest package version that will be accepted is v0.0.1. v0.0.0 is no longer permitted.

  4. All new tagged versions of packages must have a REQUIRE file, which must at a minimum contain a single line like

    julia 0.3

    specifying a minimum version of Julia the package is expected to run on. Running Pkg.tag copies the contents of a package's REQUIRE file into METADATA.jl/PkgName/versions/1.2.3/requires.

    A common mistake is to have an entry of the form

    julia 0.3-

    with the intention of specifying "version 0.3 and up." On the contrary, this line means "at least a 0.3 pre-release julia."

  5. New package version tags must have a minimum Julia version of 0.3 or newer. 0.3- (0.3 pre-releases) is no longer allowed. Exceptions may be granted for julia 0.2 if package authors are willing to vouch that they still test that their packages work on 0.2.

  6. If your package works with Julia 0.4 but not 0.3, then specify julia 0.4 in your REQUIRE file. If the package has had any previous tags which supported julia 0.3, then be sure to change the minor or major version number of the package via Pkg.tag("PkgName", :minor) for the first tag that no longer supports julia 0.3. This makes it possible to create a separate branch for any future bugfix releases that may be needed for the package on Julia 0.3.

  7. We strongly encourage everyone to update METADATA.jl through pull requests, which can be generated for you automatically when using Pkg.publish(). GitHub's pull requests allow us to run basic checks on the metadata entries. All developers (especially experienced developers!) are strongly discouraged from editing METADATA.jl directly unless absolutely necessary.

These policies have been the result of many months of discussion to improve the quality of registered packages and the overall user experience with Julia packages.