Remove a published package from hex

Questions / Help
1

I have a package published on Hex that I would like to revert. Ace 0.2.0.

Is there a way to force remove. I understand the reason for not removing releases, however there is now a situation where the git tags do not align with the hex releases. If the policy is definitive about not removing releases what would be the suggestion for fixing this discrepancy.

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2

I’d say just increment the version number again, to 0.3.0.

And you can overwrite git tags so it will match again. :slight_smile:

And I’ve no clue how to unpublish from hex (after say a 30 minutes timeout) and I’m not sure that I would want it to anyway. In my opinion packaging systems should be entirely immutable, insert only (Rust does this well).

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3

Fair enough. I agree it should be immutable but only if there is one definitive source of truth. I’m beginning to wonder if it is good enough to just use github as the package manager. Declaring a git dependency is so easy after all.

4

The problem though is that GitHub is mutable. You can change the tags at any time which makes it non-ideal as a package manager. The fact you can’t remove the package from Hex is exactly what makes it a good package manager.

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5

Could you not use a .lock file that translated tags to commit hashes, for most of the immutability advantages?

6

Could you not use a .lock file that translated tags to commit hashes, for most of the immutability advantages?

You can still remove commit refs. You are not supposed to change tags. You are also not supposed to remove commit refs. But both can be done because it is a source code repository and not a package repository.

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