Hi @ayatsenko_3635, @dubrsl_1715,
Thanks for the feedback and continued discussion.
So, our Composer feed is relatively new, so we are open to exploring new ideas. One option might be to do an "import" of packages into ProGet, similar to how we handle connectors in Terraform feeds. But that's something that could also be done with a script, so we'd want to see what that looks like as a prototype.
That said, we definitely can't implement "content pointers" to Git repositories. The Git-based "package" model is not only outdated but it has several "fatal" Software Supply Chain problems.
The biggest problem, by far, is that package content is hosted by a third party (i.e. GitHub) and managed by another third party (i.e. the repository owner). At any time, a package author or the host can simply delete the repository and cause a major downstream impact - like the infamous left-pad incident in npm.
This is why other package ecosystems have adopted a "read only" package repositories and disallow deletes (except for rare cases like abuse). Once you upload a package to npmjs, nuget, rubygems, etc. -- it's permanently there, and users can always rely on that being the case.
That's simply not possible with Git-based "packages". The "content pointer" must be updated periodically updated, such as if the author decides to move the Git repo to GitLab, Gitea, etc. Now you no longer have a read-only package repository, but one that must be editable. Who edits? Are they tracked? What edits are allowed? Etc.
There are several of other issues, especially with private/organizational usage, like the fact that there's no reasonable way to QA/test packages (i.e. compared to using a pre-release/repackaging workflow) and that committing/publishing are coupled (i.e. you tag a commit to publish it). This makes governance impractical.
And that's not to mention the fact that there's no real way to "cache" or "privatize" third-party remote Git repositories. Unless, of course, you mirror them into your own Git server... which is technically challenging, especially if the author changes hosts.
We first investigated feeds years ago, but they didn't have package files at the time -- only Git repository pointers. Like Rust/Cargo (which used to be Git-based, and still technically supports Git-based packages), we anticipate this same maturity coming to Packagist/Composer as well.
So while we certainly understand that this is a workflow shift, it's a natural evolution/maturation of package management. Likewise, it took decades for the development world to shift from "file shares" and legacy source control to "Git", but that's what everyone has standardized on.
That's the world ProGet operates in, so it might be a bit "too far ahead", or we might be misreading the tea leaves - but a "package mindset" is a requirement in using ProGet. But hoepfully we can make that easier, possibly with exploring "package imports" or something like that.
Cheers,
Steve