Historically, in WordPress development there have been no satisfactory workflows for including specific versions of plugins, themes or the WordPress core as dependencies in a new project.
The result has been inefficiency: developers were forced to download and install these via Zip files or through the WordPress interface; it was slow to create repeatable builds and best development practice in terms of dependency management was not being followed.
Feeling the need for better management of dependencies and looking to speed up project development, Outlandish created and open-sourced WPackagist.
Now specific versions of plugins, themes and core can be declared by developers and included immediately when a new WordPress project is spun up, all pulled directly from the WordPress repository.
The response from the WordPress community has been significant. WPackagist is now a core part of WordPress best-practice development, it’s frequently referenced in WordPress tutorials, conferences and WordPress books and the project on GitHub has numerous contributions by the WordPress community.
Outlandish continue to manage the WPackagist venture and it’s usage speeds the build phases of all our WordPress client projects.