Governance for Corepack?

[MikeMcC399]

Is there an official governance for Corepack?

I'm finding it difficult to understand the future direction.

• Project Status (experimental to stable?) #104 leaves an open question

Will Corepack stay within the Node.js distribution mechanism and continue to be bundled with Node.js?

If Corepack is no longer distributed with Node.js would the documentation on https://nodejs.org/docs/latest/api/corepack.html be removed, together with the classification "Experimental"?

The recent issues, where key integrity caused Corepack to fail, have shown that there are many users with Corepack in production, who are not heeding the "Experimental" status and Stability index

Stability index

Stability: 1 - Experimental. The feature is not subject to semantic versioning rules. Non-backward compatible changes or removal may occur in any future release. Use of the feature is not recommended in production environments

[aduh95]

The current situation is not ideal for anyone, no one denies that. Unfortunately discussions last year about changes have been very draining, because folks have very different opinions (usually ranging from "we should mark it stable and presenting as the de-facto solution for using (non-npm) package managers" to "Corepack has unfixable design flaws that makes it unfit for the ecosystem, and we should remove it from Node.js distribution") and it's very hard to come to any consensus.

The likely outcome for such discussion IMO would be for an alternative to Corepack to emerge and be adopted by all involved parties – and that work has started, but backed up by volunteers (and personally I still feel a bit burnt out by the previous discussion), so progress is slow. However, as far as Corepack is concerned, nothing changes (i.e. it will keep being distributed with Node.js as experimental) until that alternative is ready.

[MikeMcC399]

@aduh95

Thank you very much for the summary! That is very helpful to know what to expect for the moment and it means that I have a framework to make my own downstream decisions.

[styfle]

Great summary! I might be worth pinning this issue so the next person who has this question can easily find the answer.

[MikeMcC399]

@styfle

Great summary! I might be worth pinning this issue so the next person who has this question can easily find the answer.

Although there was a description of future direction there was no answer given to "Is there an official governance for Corepack?" so I still don't know who (organization, collaborating individuals or one person) is officially in charge of Corepack. That should be clarified before pinning, otherwise it would look strange.

[aduh95]

Corepack is a Node.js project, and is maintained by the members of @nodejs/corepack.

[MikeMcC399]

@aduh95

Corepack is a Node.js project, and is maintained by the members of @nodejs/corepack.

Do you publish the names of the members of @nodejs/corepack anywhere? If this is a GitHub Team then it is not visible outside of the organization.

[MikeMcC399]

Please consider if it is possible to create a governance document like the one for Yarn on https://github.com/yarnpkg/berry/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md

or if one exists elsewhere, then please link to it.