The Packagr free tier is changing
TL;DR
The Packagr free tier will no longer issue repository URLs for free accounts, and will have a storage allowance of 100MB. In order to avoid conflicts, all packages will be renamed This change does not affect any paid accounts. If you upgrade your free account to a paid one before the change is made, and mark all your packages as private, then you will not be affected
What's changing?
From version 1.4.0, Packagr will stop issuing private repository URLs to free tier users. So if you are a free tier user of Packagr.app, in future you will need to use the public repository URL to access Packagr:
https://api.packagr.app/
All free tier users will now use this root location as their repository URL.
Additionally, the storage allowance for free users is now being reduced to 100MB.
Why are these changes being made?
Ultimately, these changes will allow us to focus more on our paying customers.
Our free tier is intended as a trial for users who intend to eventually upgrade to a paid version of Packagr, without adding any time pressure to upgrade.
We have recently seen a large increase in the number of users who use Packagr to host large volumes of public builds, using the obscurity of a private repository URL to keep their packages hidden, rather than the built in security that the paid versions offer, with no intention of upgrading.
Ultimately, Packagr is for private builds. If you only need to create public builds, you can use PyPI for that, completely free of charge.
What about package conflicts?
Moving all free packages to the same repository URL does introduce a risk of causing clashes between packages with the same names, generated by different users. For example, if two different users have packages called hello-world, then using pip install -i https://api.packagr.app or twine upload --repository-url https://api.packagr.app would confuse it. In order to avoid such clashes, ALL PUBLIC PACKAGES WILL BE RENAMED by appending the user's existing Hash ID to the package name, as follows
hello-world_<my_hash_id>
The new names will be visible in the interface, so can be checked in there.
What if I have more than 100MB of packages?
If you're on the free tier and are already above the new 100MB file size limit, then you'll no longer be able to upload any new versions. You can either delete packages to get below this limit, or upgrade your account to get the full benefits of Packagr.
When will this happen?
The feature is currently being tested and is due to be pushed live in the next two weeks. We'll send a further update when this happens - please keep an eye on our Twitter feed to make sure you don't miss it