What the Future Holds for the Official jQuery Plugin Repository

More than a week ago, the official jQuery plugin repository was closed down after an internal decision due to high spam count. Now the dev team comes with an official response and plans about the repository's future.

At that time, our Security editor wrote an article about the demise of the plugins repository, which you can read to get yourself up to date with what happened.

Today, the jQuery plugin repository maintainer, Adam Sontag, released an official statement about the future plans regarding the repository section.

Leveraging GitHub's success amongst developers, jQuery is planning a GitHub-powered repository, and by doing so, eliminating any file uploads, downloads, or package administration through their site.

It will basically work just like the MooTools repository, listing plugins, descriptions, dependencies, but the plugins themselves will be hosted and delivered to users from the authors' GitHub account.

The new repository will also borrow some features from CommonJS and npm, and will use a package.json file to list all the plugin's individual details.

This means future jQuery plugins can be added via post-receive GitHub hooks and updated automatically whenever a new GitHub-hosted tagged release is made. All releases must be in Tom Preston-Werner's Semantic Versioning system.

The new entire process is a far cry from what plugin submissions and updates were on the old site: a painstaking and time consuming process that made developers pull their hair out.

Also, in the wake of this announcement, Mr. Sontag revealed what really happened when the repository went down.

It appears that in an effort to clear some of the spam from the site using a special Drupal module, the database was wiped clean, with no recent backup in hand. Only a one-year-old backup file was available and that was deemed insufficient.

The jQuery Team had to choose to restore the old backup on a spam vulnerable repository, or just start over from scratch, in a more controllable and user-friendly environment.

Work on this new repository has started and development is open. Check out the new repository's source code on GitHub.

No timetable has been given for the new repository's launch. The official jQuery statement can be read here.