Research: Show additional download information about packages
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Status 2022-09-06
This feature was covered in research:
The conclusions are for some customers having download information presented in the UI is useful, for others not. For customers interesting in seeing download metrics in the UI, some also want to see what specifically is pulling the package.
For the customers that download information is not useful, one reason listed as that they are publishing updates to packages several times daily. For them, a cleanup policy based on last_download_at would also not be helpful. From research we know that:
- Having download information available to set cleanup policies is interesting to many customers
- Having download information presented in the UI is interesting to some customers (and the information they are interested in is not always just download metrics)
Therefore we have prioritized a more simple change of tracking when a package was last downloaded (#362259 (closed)) to be used as a. cleanup policy. We have also prioritized showing that information on the UI: #362393 (closed)
Next steps
While the research showed this feature isn't useful to all customers, it could still be useful to explore showing download information in the UI. It would be especially interesting to explore the possibilities of showing now only download metrics, but information about what's pulling the package. Exploration of showing download information needs further validation to refine what the problem is.
Release notes
Have you ever been searching for a dependency for your project on https://www.npmjs.com/ and weren't sure which one you should use based on the name? You may have decided which to choose based on the number of downloads, which is a helpful signal if you are on the right path.
Until recently the GitLab Package Registry did offer any insight into how many times a given package has been downloaded. This was particularly problematic for larger teams or large organizations with many large teams. These groups may publish thousands of packages and it can be difficult to know which package should be used. Displaying the number of downloads may help the user to find, verify or validate the package they are looking for.
Moving forward, packages will include the total number of downloads in the package registry user interface. This information can also be found by using the Packages API.
Problem to solve
The total number of downloads is a useful signal for Developers to know if a given package is the one that they should be using. However, the GitLab Package Registry does not report this information anywhere, making it difficult to quickly find the most frequently used version of a given dependency.
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