wtf is packagist?

Packagist is the official package repository website for Composer, which is a tool that helps PHP developers manage code libraries in their projects. Think of it like an app store, but for reusable code, developers search for packages they need, and Packagist tells them where to find them and how to install them. The site works by collecting information about thousands of open-source PHP packages, storing details about each one (what it does, what version you're using, how many times it's been downloaded), and making that information searchable. Behind the scenes, it connects to GitHub, GitLab, and other code repositories to keep package information up-to-date. When a developer needs a library, they search Packagist, find what they're looking for, and then use Composer to automatically download and integrate it into their project. This particular repository is the actual source code that powers packagist.org, the public site millions of PHP developers use every day. However, the project maintainers are explicit that this code isn't meant to be forked and run as your own package repository, they support it as open source to make contributions easier, but they don't provide help for self-hosting and reserve the right to make breaking changes without warning. If you want a private package repository for your own company, they recommend using Private Packagist (packagist.com), which is a hosted service designed for that purpose. The codebase is built with PHP and Symfony (a web framework), uses MySQL to store package information, and relies on Redis for features like tracking which packages are users' favorites and recording download statistics. To develop on it locally, you'd need to set up these tools, install dependencies, create test databases, and run a background worker process to keep package data fresh. The README indicates this is really a project for core contributors rather than a general-purpose platform you'd set up yourself.