Packagist Releases Screensaver
The Packagist Releases screensaver shows pHP packages as they are published to Packagist, gathered key-less by the background pipeline from its release feed. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Packagist Releases screensaver works
The background pipeline reads this from Packagist and saves a snapshot the saver loads.
PHP packages as they are published to Packagist, gathered key-less by the background pipeline from its release feed..
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
How Packagist builds its release stream
Packagist is the default package repository for Composer, the PHP dependency manager. It aggregates public packages anyone can install and tells Composer where to get the code. Its maintenance and hosting are provided by Private Packagist, a company founded by Composer’s creators. A package is named vendor/package, such as monolog/monolog.
Packagist does not host the code itself. It indexes package metadata and points at the package’s public repository, which must contain a composer.json file at its root. Versions come from tags in that repository, while branches appear as dev versions. If the maintainer enables a service hook on GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or Gitea, a push triggers an update; without one, Packagist crawls the package only periodically.
That mechanism explains the pattern of the feed. Some vendors publish whole families of packages from separate repositories and tag them together, so a cloud provider’s SDK can fill many consecutive lines with the same version. A new tag also does not mean the code is reviewed, stable or even working; it only means a version exists.
A worked example
PHP packages as they are published to Packagist, gathered key-less by the background pipeline from its release feed.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Run
automation/run.py packagistto refresh the feed. - Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from Packagist and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Does Packagist store the actual code?
- No. It stores package metadata and links to the source repository, and Composer downloads the code from there.
- How does Packagist find out about a new release?
- Versions come from tags in the package’s repository. A service hook on GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or Gitea triggers an update when the maintainer pushes, and otherwise Packagist crawls the repository periodically.
- What is Composer?
- The dependency manager for PHP, which reads a project’s requirements and downloads the matching packages, by default from Packagist.