AutoIt Package Manager

[genius257]

version 0.3.1 released.

https://github.com/genius257/au3pm/releases/tag/0.3.1

changes:

• Fixed issues with collecting available AutoIt3 versions (52f5b8d)
• Changed AutoIt dependency support from just "AutoIt" with non complient semantic versioning, to "autoit1", "autoit2" and "autoit3" that are complient with semantic versioning
• Deprecated "AutoIt" dependency
• Fixed issues with wrong parsing and stringification of escaped chars in JSON strings. (a787859)
• Changed the run command, to also support no additional parameters (177a9ce)

[genius257]

General project status update/info:

Despite the slow development, this project is not dead to me

I have purchased the domain https://au3.pm/ with the plan of making it the default/main/official au3pm page repository lookup. Currently the page is unfinished and not usable, reasons being reflection on how the package management part should be done (explained below).

Previously i had settled on making a single GitHub repository act as the default/main/official au3pm page lookup repository. This seemed like a cheap, simple and functional solution, and to some degree still is... except:

• If too many files/directories exists in a single directory, the GitHub web view and API will not return all entries.
• Using one JSON file in the root of the repository as a package dictionary/lookup will cause issues with parsing times as more packages are added.
• Using GitHub actions for the au3pm "butler" script has issues, where the implementation keeps breaking, due to varies points of failure.

So do i have any alternatives? yes, i think i do:

1. Keep the repository in a database (most likely MySQL) and use PHP/JS to serve and manage CRUD actions to the repository.

This is what i am planning to do with https://au3.pm/ page. I wanted to keep the database as publicly available as possible and have been looking into using DOLT for the database: https://www.dolthub.com/repositories/au3pm/registry. However the current server setup i use does not support running DOLT, and dolthub does not currently have any way for me to verify that a dolthub user making a pull request for changes, corresponds to the GitHub user owning the repository entry being added/edited/removed.

So currently this read leads to the database being a plain MySQL/MariaDB hosted on my server. This is okay for not, but not great if people want to easily clone my database for an alternative lookup.

 

2. Remove the options for a centralized package lookup repository, and instead require actual per package repository references.

This will always require longer dependency strings and may create issues with discoverability of available au3pm compatible packages.

 

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So not a make or break situation, but something that should be decided on before v1.0.0

Thoughts/feedback is of course always appreciated, and i hope this tool will end up being used by more people than just me

Thanks for reading

[TheDcoder]

Have you considered supporting git repositories as packages directly? That way you don't need to deal with a central database at all (but you can still have one, of course). NPM supports this and even has a shorthand for adding git repos from GitHub directly I think.

[genius257]

Hi @TheDcoder

5 hours ago, TheDcoder said:

Have you considered supporting git repositories as packages directly? That way you don't need to deal with a central database at all (but you can still have one, of course).

Yes my 2nd alternative is this, sorry if this was unclear

19 hours ago, genius257 said:

2. Remove the options for a centralized package lookup repository, and instead require actual per package repository references.

This will always require longer dependency strings and may create issues with discoverability of available au3pm compatible packages.

 

5 hours ago, TheDcoder said:

NPM supports this and even has a shorthand for adding git repos from GitHub directly I think.

To be clear, i plan on supporting direct GitHub repositories either way