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Packages: prefer versions over SHAs

Created by: varungandhi-src

With package repos, one of the problems we run into is maintainining stable SHAs. For example, we may want to tune the parameters for converting package repos into git repos which can affect repo contents.

From a user perspective, tags (or more precisely, versions) make more sense. However, currently, we expose SHAs in multiple places:

  • #31938
  • In canonical links generated on using the y shortcut.
  • Multiple other places which expose the SHA directly or under a "Commits" label.

If the user copies a URL with a SHA somewhere else, those links may break if the configuration changed and a repository's contents were updated. This creates an unreliable (and frustrating) user experience where it's not clear why some links broke. Moreover, such changes would not happen very often, making it more likely that people rely on the URLs being stable.

We should try to direct people to versions (which are currently encoded as git tags) instead of SHAs if possible. It might make sense to enable this functionality for Perforce as well, if Perforce changelist information is being encoded using tags.