Yanked crates should be discounted/de-emphasized/demarcated somehow in search results

[daboross]

If all versions of a crate have been yanked, it probably shouldn't show up in searches, at least I can't see why it would want to. If a user clicks on a completely-yanked crate that shows up in search, they will be brought to a page which simply states "This crate has been yanked, but it is still available for download for other crates that may be depending on it.".

It seems like it would be better to not display those crates at all, or maybe add a checkbox with Show deprecated crates to toggle showing them.

For example, https://crates.io/search?q=fern brings up the now-useless fern_macros crate (which has been completely yanked, and doesn't compile on the beta), instead of just the fern crate.

[carols10cents]

Hm, what if you're searching to see if a name is taken yet? You're still not allowed to use the name of a crate that has had all its versions yanked.

The Show deprecated crates checkbox is a good idea, I'd want it to be checked by default though and saved in a cookie (as opposed to saving it with your user account, so that you don't have to be logged in to save your preference) and I don't think we have anything stored in cookies right now so this wouldn't be super trivial.

Other options:

• show a badge, or possibly show 'yanked' in the badge where the latest version number is now
• fade a crate in a list when all its versions have been yanked
• sort yanked crates to the bottom, unless it's an exact name match for your query (those get ranked at the top right now)

[daboross]

Thank you for the response!

I think a "yanked" badge would definitely be better than what we have now, and could work well alongside a 'Show deprecated crates' checkbox, if that was implemented later.

I don't know or have any preference on what should be done with crates where some versions are yanked - I'm just concerned that crates that aren't at all for new projects to use are showing up as if they were available crates.

I think they should disappear from user pages

[carols10cents]

@fwrs thanks for the suggestion! I've filed #958 for that.