Over the last few months, the packages website (https://packages.zeek.org) went through a major upgrade. Initially it was an effort to move the entire site to Docker, instead of running directly on the AWS instance that we host it from. This move allows us to more easily maintain the site, since we can stand up development versions of it quickly when the need arises.
Once that work was completed, some changes to the package scanner (that generates the package index for the site) required a move to a much newer version of Python. Unfortuately the version of the PHP container were using was based on an older version of Debian that didn’t support newer Pythons.
The whole site infrastructure has now been updated from PHP 7.1 to 8.4. This work included upgrading the HTTP framework we use (CakePHP moved from 3.x to 5.x) and the front-end CSS framework we use (Bootstrap moved from 3.x to 5.x). These upgrades also stabilize the codebase to where future upgrades can be more incremental instead of huge jumps.
The overall site should function and look mostly the same with minor upgrades to the look-and-feel identified by the team, such as removing that funky box-that-looks-like-a-search-field-but-isn’t-actually-a-search-field on the front page.