WP Engine recently acquired WPackagist, a critical open source infrastructure for the WordPress developer community. This raised concerns about what happens when corporate control takes over such essential tools. In response, WP Packages, formerly known as WP Composer, was launched as an independent, community-funded alternative with additional features.
WP Packages, developed by Ben Words from Roots, offers a new open source Composer repository for WordPress plugins and themes. Composer is PHP’s dependency manager commonly used by professional WordPress developers to install and update plugins and themes. All free plugins and themes available on WordPress.org can be accessed through WP Packages, making it a seamless transition from WPackagist to this new platform.
The creation of WPackagist in 2013 by Outlandish served the WordPress Composer ecosystem for over a decade. However, with deferred maintenance and slow update cycles in its later years, the acquisition by WP Engine raised concerns among developers. The immediate display of “WPackagist is now maintained by WP Engine” notice in terminal screens highlighted the shift in ownership and control of this crucial infrastructure.
Ben had already begun developing a WPackagist replacement before the acquisition, and he expedited the launch of WP Packages in response. This new platform offers transparency by making its infrastructure and build process public, unlike its predecessor. Additionally, WP Packages enhances user experience by supporting Composer v2’s metadata-url protocol, enabling faster dependency resolutions compared to WPackagist.
WP Packages also utilizes CDN caching with public cache headers, serving immutable, content-addressed per-package files for improved performance. The platform features cleaner package naming, includes metadata for plugin and theme authors, descriptions, and homepage URLs, and updates sync every five minutes. These enhancements make WP Packages a superior tool for WordPress developers.
Switching from WPackagist to WP Packages is a straightforward process that involves a few terminal commands to remove existing packages, repositories, and require packages with the new naming convention. A migration script is also available for automated updates to composer.json. Additionally, Roots offers the WP Packages Changelog Action for GitHub workflows to track dependency updates using the new naming format.
One of the key advantages of WP Packages is its commitment to transparency and community-driven development. The entire project, including the application code, documentation, and Ansible deployment configuration, is publicly available on GitHub. This open approach ensures that WP Packages will never use the Composer info field for intrusive messages, ads, or upsells, maintaining a developer-friendly environment.
Funded through GitHub Sponsors, WP Packages has received support from companies like Carrot, Kinsta, WordPress.com, and Itineris. The project exemplifies the strength of the WordPress ecosystem when the community collaborates to build necessary tools openly. By addressing a gap in the market and delivering a superior solution without the need for acquisition or corporate oversight, WP Packages embodies the essence of open source success.
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