(How) Can I update a package that was submitted by someone else and has been archived since?

General
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Hi everyone,

I hope this is the right place to ask.
I’ve recently forked (https://github.com/NoahFreising/tufte-memo) a template I liked to use and added some fixes, because it broke with the new typst version. I made a pull request to the repo but in the meantime the repository (https://github.com/nogula/tufte-memo) was archived by the owner. I think it would be nice to distribute the fixed version as a package. Can I submit a new version for the (broken) package or would I need to submit it as a new package?

Thanks

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Hi. I don’t know if you can just slap “2” in the name, but it must be unique, unless the package owner can permit an update under the same name, probably. The license conditions must be fulfilled, which I guess they are. That’s all.

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If you can get hold of the author, they could hand the package over to you. There are two places the handover can/needs to happen:

  • the Github repo: since you already forked the repo, there’s not really a need to transfer ownership of the original repo (unless there are a lot of open issues/PRs that would be worth preserving)
  • the Typst package: this happens when you make a release pull request. For example, I became a maintainer of the linguify package, and here is how that looked: linguify:0.4.2 by SillyFreak · Pull Request #1730 · typst/packages · GitHub. The bot messaged the user who made the previous release, and the PR was blocked until they responded.

I will add here that in the recent past many such handovers have coincided with transfers of repos into Typst Community · GitHub to make shared maintainership easier. That is not necessary, but I want to add it in case future readers find that a useful path forward.

Finally, there is nothing wrong with putting a new name on the package (while respecting the license), as Andrew has already said.

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