General

General is the default Julia package registry. Package registries are used by Julia's package manager Pkg.jl and includes information about packages such as versions, dependencies and compatibility constraints.

The General registry is open for everyone to use and provides access to a large ecosystem of packages.

If you are registering a new package, please make sure that you have read the package naming guidelines.

Registering a package in General

New packages and new versions of packages are added the General registry by pull requests against this GitHub repository. It is highly recommended that you use Registrator.jl to automate this process. Registrator can either be used as a GitHub App or through a web interface, as decribed in the Registrator README.

When Registrator is triggered a pull request is opened against this repository. Pull requests that meet certain guidelines is merged automatically, see Automatic merging of pull requests. Other pull requests need to be manually reviewed and merged by a human.

It is highly recommended to also use TagBot, which automatically tags a release in your repository after the new release of your package is merged into the registry.

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.

Automatic merging of pull requests

Pull requests that meet certain criteria are automatically merged periodically. Only pull requests that are opened by Registrator are candidates for automatic merging.

The following criteria are applied for all pull requests (regardless if it is a new package or just a new version):

• Version number: Should be a standard increment and not skip versions. This means incrementing the patch/minor/major version with +1 compared to previous (if any) releases. If, for example, 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 are existing versions, valid new versions are 1.0.1, 1.1.1, 1.2.0 and 2.0.0. Invalid new versions include 1.0.2 (skips 1.0.1), 1.3.0 (skips 1.2.0), 3.0.0 (skips 2.0.0) etc.

• Dependencies: All dependencies should have [compat] entries that are upper bounded and only include a finite number of breaking releases. For example, the following [compat] entries meet the criteria for automatic merging:

  [compat]
  PackageA = "1"          # [1.0.0, 2.0.0), has upper bound (good)
  PackageB = "0.1, 0.2"   # [0.1.0, 0.3.0), has upper bound (good)

  The following [compat] entries do NOT meet the criteria for automatic merging:

  [compat]
  PackageC = ">=3"        # [3.0.0, ∞), no upper bound (bad)
  PackageD = ">=0.4, <1"  # [-∞, ∞), no lower bound, no upper bound (very bad)

  Please note: each [compat] entry must include only a finite number of breaking releases. Therefore, the following [compat] entries do NOT meet the criteria for automatic merging:

  [compat]
  PackageE = "0"          # includes infinitely many breaking 0.x releases of PackageE (bad)
  PackageF = "0.2 - 0"    # includes infinitely many breaking 0.x releases of PackageF (bad)
  PackageG = "0.2 - 1"    # includes infinitely many breaking 0.x releases of PackageG (bad)

  See Pkg's documentation for specification of [compat] entries in your Project.toml file.

  (Note: Standard libraries are excluded for this criterion since they are bundled with Julia, and, hence, implicitly included in the [compat] entry for Julia. For the time being, JLL dependencies are also excluded for this criterion because they often have non-standard version numbering schemes; however, this may change in the future.)

  You may find CompatHelper.jl helpful for maintaining up-to-date [compat] entries.

• Package installation: The package should be installable (Pkg.add("PackageName")), and loadable (import PackageName).

The following list is applied for new package registrations, in addition to the previous list:

• The package name should start with a capital letter, contain only ASCII alphanumeric characters, contain a lowercase letter, be at least 5 characters long, and should not start with "Ju" or contain the string "julia".

• To prevent confusion between similarly named packages, the names of new packages must also satisfy three checks:

  • the Damerau–Levenshtein distance between the package name and the name of any existing package must be at least 3.
  • the Damerau–Levenshtein distance between the lowercased version of a package name and the lowercased version of the name of any existing package must be at least 2.
  • and a visual distance from VisualStringDistances.jl between the package name and any existing package must exceeds a certain a hand-chosen threshold (currently 2.5).

  These checks and tolerances are subject to change in order to improve the process.

  To test yourself that a tentative package name, say MyPackage meets these checks, you can use the following code (after adding the RegistryCI package to your Julia environment):

  using RegistryCI
  using RegistryCI.AutoMerge
  all_pkg_names = AutoMerge.get_all_non_jll_package_names(path_to_registry)
  AutoMerge.meets_distance_check("MyPackage", all_pkg_names)

  where path_to_registry is a path to the folder containing the registry of interest. For the General Julia registry, usually path_to_registry = joinpath(DEPOT_PATH[1], "registries", "General") if you haven't changed your DEPOT_PATH. This will return a boolean, indicating whether or not your tentative package name passed the check, as well as a string, indicating what the problem is in the event the check did not pass.

  Note that these automerge guidelines are deliberately conservative: it is very possible for a perfectly good name to not pass the automatic checks and require manual merging. They simply exist to provide a fast path so that manual review is not required for every new package.

Please report issues with automatic merging to the RegistryCI repo.

Currently the waiting period is as follows:

• New Julia packages: 3 days (this allows time for community feedback)
• New versions of existing packages: 15 minutes
• JLL package (binary dependencies): 15 minutes, for either a new package or a new version

FAQ

My pull request was not approved for automatic merging, what do I do?

It is recommended that you fix the release to conform to the guidelines and then retrigger Registrator on the branch/commit that includes the fix.

If you for some reason can't (or won't) adhere to the guidelines you will have to wait for a human to review/merge the pull request. You can contact a human in the #pkg-registration channel in the official Julia Slack to expedite this process.

My pull request has a merge conflict, what do I do?

Retrigger Registrator.

How do I retrigger Registrator in order to update my pull request?

Do what you did when you triggered Registrator the first time.

Are there any requirements for package names in the General registry?

There are no hard requirements, but it is highly recommended to follow the package naming guidelines.

What to do when asked to reconsider/update the package name?

If someone comments on the name of your package when you first release it it is often because it does not follow the naming guidelines. If you think that your package should not follow those conventions for some reason or another, just explain why. Otherwise, it is often a good idea to just rename the package -- it is more disruptive to do so after it is already registered, and sticking to the conventions makes it easier for users to navigate Julia's many varied packages.

As long as the package is not yet registered, renaming the package from OldName.jl to NewName.jl is reasonably straightforward:

• Rename the GitHub repository to NewName.jl
• Rename the file src/OldName.jl to src/NewName.jl
• Rename the top-level module to NewName
• Update tests, documentation, etc, to reference the new name

How do I rename an existing registered package?

Technically, you can't rename a package once registered, as this would break existing users. But you can re-register the package again under a new name with a new UUID. Which has basically the same effect.

• Follow the instructions above for renaming a package: rename on GitHub, rename files etc.
• Generate a new UUID for the Project.toml
• Increment the version in the Project.toml as a breaking change.
• Register it as if it were a new package
• Comment on the PR, that this is a rename.
• It will have to go though the normal criteria for registring a new package.
  • In particular, even if you get it merged manually, it will need to wait 3 days from the PR being opened.
  • This gives others and yourself the chance to point out any naming issues.

You also should let your users know about the rename, e.g. by placing a note in the README, or opening PRs/issues on downstream packages to change over.

How do I transfer a package to an organization or another user?

• Use the GitHub transfer option in the settings.
• Manually, in the General edit the repo URL in package's Package.toml file (e.g E/Example/Package.toml)

Technically if you skip the second step things will keep working, because GitHub will redirect; but it is best practice.

Where do I report a problem with a package in the General registry?

Report it to the package repository.

How do I remove a package or version from the registry?

You can't. Package registrations are permanent. A version can not be overwritten in the registry, and code cannot be deleted.

Registry maintenance

The General registry is a shared resource that belongs to the entire Julia community. Therefore, we welcome comments and suggestions from everyone in the Julia community. However, all decisions regarding the General registry are ultimately up to the discretion of the registry maintainers.

Disclaimer

The General registry is open for everyone to register packages in. The General registry is not a curated list of Julia packages. In particular this means that:

• packages included in the General registry are not reviewed/scrutinized;
• packages included in the General registry are not "official" packages and not endorsed/approved by the JuliaLang organization;
• the General registry and its maintainers are not responsible for the package code you install through the General registry -- you are responsible for reviewing your code dependencies.

Tips for registry maintainers

Enabling/disabling AutoMerge

To enable/disable automerge, make a pull request to edit the .github/workflows/automerge.yml file. Specifically, you want to edit the lines near the bottom of the file that look like this:

        env:
          MERGE_NEW_PACKAGES: true
          MERGE_NEW_VERSIONS: true