elementary / os-patches

Patched packages for elementary OS and the tools that keep them up-to-date

OS Patches metarepository

This repository contains all the sources for the elementary specific patches

The packages are included into the OS Patches Repository.

How is this repository working

The master branch is composed of GitHub Workflows that are running daily to check for any new version in the Ubuntu repositories of the patched components. If a newer version of a package is found in the Ubuntu repositories, a GitHub issue will be opened in this repository to let the team know to rebase patches and push and update.

The workflow uses the get-latest-version.py python script included.

It depends on python3-launchpadlib, python3-apt and python3-github.

Many branches

The repository is made of several distinct branches:

• import-list-$UBUNTU_NAME is the branch listing the different packages that are getting patched.
• $PACKAGE-$UBUNTU_NAME is the last source that got used to create the patched version
• $PACKAGE-$UBUNTU_NAME-patched is $PACKAGE-$UBUNTU_NAME with the patch applied on it

The package list file in import-list-$UBUNTU_NAME contains one package per line of packages to be monitored by the workflow. If the patched package has been backported from a newer Ubuntu release, you can denote this in the list with a colon separator

e.g. packagekit:$NEWER_UBUNTU_NAME

Note that when possible, we try to discourage the use of OS patches and work directly with upstream to include them.

Creating a new Patch

1. Create a new orphan branch

   git checkout --orphan {pkg-name}-{dist} && git rm -rf .

2. Get the source of the package to be patched with apt-source. Do not use sudo.

   apt source {pkg-name}

3. Remove everything but the unpacked sources

   rm *.tar.* *.dsc

4. Move the source folder contents up to the pwd and then delete the empty folder

   cp -r {source-folder-name}/* . && rm -r {source-folder-name}

5. Add source files, commit, and push

   git add * && git commit -am "Initial Import, version {pkg-version}"

6. Create a -patched branch as a fork of this branch, not an orphan, make changes and push

7. Create a packaging recipe on Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/~elementary-os/elementaryos/+git/os-patches/+recipes

8. Once the build succeeds and is uploaded, update the import-list-{dist} branch. If this is done before the build succeeds, there will be false issue reports filed due to missing packages.