Why is the keywords limited to English?

[xjchengo]

I want to use Chinese keywords for my package. But it cannot pass validation:

$this->validateFlatArray('keywords', '[A-Za-z0-9 ._-]+');

And the description doesn't have this limitation.

$this->validateString('description');

It is kind of unfriendly.

[Seldaek]

The main reason is that we do index them in packagist and for that purpose they should be international, but technically nothing prevents you from putting Chinese in there as far as I know, it just won't pass the composer validate checks. Maybe we should downgrade this to a warning instead of error if it helps.

[xjchengo]

Packagist has this limitation too. If I use Chinese keywords, the package cannot be updated to Packagist. A lot of pacakages are limited to specified domains. If the keywords must be English, it makes the packages hard to find because many people don't know English keywords counterpart of these domains. Take it into account please.

[alcohol]

Nobody is stopping you from creating a Chinese Packagist if it is that important to you. It's open source, so go right ahead. Packagist.org is focused on an international audience, and I don't want to be rude, but Chinese isn't exactly a language that is spoken world wide (yet?). If you want to release on Packagist.org, then English is the recommended language.

[alcohol]

@Seldaek it seems this is already considered a warning by the way, or at least, it seems to be added to the warnings array inside ValidatingArrayLoader.

[alcohol]

@xjchengo can you tell me where it does not pass validation according to you? What actions are you taking when it fails? Please give me a step by step scenario to reproduce.

[xjchengo]

The xjchen/wechat-filter package of which you are a maintainer has
failed to update due to invalid data contained in your composer.json.
Please address this as soon as possible since the package stopped updating.

It is recommended that you use `composer validate` to check for errors when you
change your composer.json.

Below is the full update log which should highlight errors as
"Skipped branch ...":

[Composer\Repository\InvalidRepositoryException]: Some branches contained invalid data and were discarded, it is advised to review the log and fix any issues present in branches

Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v2.0.2)
Importing tag v2.0.2 (2.0.2.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v2.0.1)
Importing tag v2.0.1 (2.0.1.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v2.0.0)
Importing tag v2.0.0 (2.0.0.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v1.2.0)
Importing tag v1.2.0 (1.2.0.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v1.1.0)
Importing tag v1.1.0 (1.1.0.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v1.0.1)
Importing tag v1.0.1 (1.0.1.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (v1.0.0)
Importing tag v1.0.0 (1.0.0.0)
Reading composer.json of xjchen/wechat-filter (master)
Importing branch master (dev-master)
Skipped branch master, Invalid package information: 
keywords.3 : invalid value (微信), must match [A-Za-z0-9 ._-]+

This is error message when updated to Packagist.
You can add a non-english keyword to reproduce.

[alcohol]

Ok, so you want to submit this issue at composer/packagist then, since it is unrelated to composer/composer. I don't see how composer is doing anything wrong here.

[Seldaek]

If the keywords must be English, it makes the packages hard to find because many people don't know English keywords counterpart of these domains. Take it into account please.

That makes sense yes you're right. I think we can just drop the validation or allow all chars at least, I'll take a quick look at this.

[xjchengo]

@Seldaek @alcohol Thanks.

[Seldaek]

Note that it won't be fixed on packagist until I deploy a new version using latest composer, so please have some more patience :) But it'll be fixed eventually, then hopefully it won't explode the packagist search engine ;)

[Seldaek]

@xjchengo should now be fixed, please let me know if you experience any issues.