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termux-packages/CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributing

Termux is an open source application and it is built on users' contributions. However, most of work is done by Termux maintainers on their spare time and therefore only priority tasks are being completed.

Here are ways how you can help:

Developer's wiki is available at https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki.

Fixing issues

Contribute to Termux by submitting new packages or fixing bugs. Pay attention to issues labeled as "bug report" and "help wanted".

Note that issue solving may not be easy. If you decided to contribute to @termux, ensure that you read the developer's wiki. You will also need some basic knowledge about Shell Scripting and build systems like Autotools or CMake.

Contributors should take full responsibility about submitted changes. Pull requests containing incomplete work or disruptive changes will NOT be merged.

A note about package requests

Termux keeps more than 1000 packages in its repositories. That is quite many, considering that Termux maintainers team is small and we prefer to use free hosting for packages repository. In order to be able to provide services at reasonable quality, we have to put restrictions on acceptable package requests.

Here are general conditions which should be met to include the requested package in our repositories:

  • Packages must be active, well-known projects. Those which are already included into major Linux distributions like Debian have more chances to be included in Termux. Outdated, dead projects are not accepted.

  • Packages must be licensed under widely-recognised open source license like Apache-2.0, GNU GPL, MIT and similar. Open source but non-free packages are acceptable and are processed on individual basis. Packages which are closed source are not accepted.

  • Packages must NOT be a part of language-specific ecosystem. These packages are installable through cpan, gem, npm, pip and similar.

  • Packages must NOT duplicate functionality of the already present ones.

  • Packages must NOT be phishing or pentesting tools. This does not apply for tools with double purpose like Nmap.

Also we will reject any requests for low-quality packages, simple utilities consisting of one-file scripts and scripts which automate use of existing packages.

We want to be sure that are adding useful things into our repositories. So when requesting a package, please provide a brief description what package does and why we should add it. Statements like "it's hard to compile on device", "I request it because I need it", "it's convenient to install it with package manager" are NOT valid reasons to request a package.

Please be ready that your package request will not be processed immediately.

Updating packages

Keeping packages up-to-date ensures that Termux users' will not experience the upstream bugs or security issues and will be able to use the latest features.

Periodically check the Repology page to see what is outdated and submit a pull request with version update.

How to update package

asciicast

Most packages can be updated by just modifying variables TERMUX_PKG_VERSION and TERMUX_PKG_SHA256.

  • TERMUX_PKG_VERSION: a text field containing an original version of package.
  • TERMUX_PKG_SHA256: a text field or an array of text fields containing SHA-256 checksum for each source code bundle defined by TERMUX_PKG_SRCURL.

More about build.sh variables you can read on developer's wiki.

Rebuilding package with no version change

Changes to patch files and build configuration options require submission of a new package release with a different version string. As we can't modify the original package version, we append a number called revision. This number should be incremented on each submitted build whenever project's version remains to be same.

Revision is specified through TERMUX_PKG_REVISION build.sh variable. To have build.sh script easily readable, we require revision variable to be placed on the next line after TERMUX_PKG_VERSION.

TERMUX_PKG_VERSION=1.0
TERMUX_PKG_REVISION=4

Downgrading a package or changing versioning scheme

Sometimes we need to downgrade a package or in any other way to change format of version string but we also need to tell package manager that this is a new package version which should be installed with apt upgrade. To force new build to be a package update, we set a package epoch.

We don't have separate build.sh variable for specifying epoch, so we doing that through TERMUX_PKG_VERSION variable. It takes following format:

${EPOCH}:${ORIG_VERSION}

Epoch should be bumped on each change of versioning scheme or downgrade.

TERMUX_PKG_VERSION=1:0.5
TERMUX_PKG_REVISION=4

Note that if you are not @termux collaborator, pull request must contain a description why you are submitting a package downgrade. All pull requests which submit package downgrading without any serious reason will be denied.

Dealing with patch errors

Major changes introduced to packages often make current patches incompatible with newer package version. Unfortunately, there no universal guide about fixing patch issues as workaround is always based on changes introduced to the new source code version.

Here are few things you may to try:

  1. If patch fixing particular known upstream issue, check the project's VCS for commits fixing the issue. There is a chance that patch is no longer needed.

  2. Inspecting the failed patch file and manually applying changes to source code. Do so only if you understand the source code and changes introduced by patch.

    Regenerate patch file, e.g. with:

    diff -uNr package-1.0 package-1.0.mod > previously-failed-patch-file.patch

Always check the CI (Github Actions) status for your pull request. If it fails, then either fix or close it. Maintainers can fix it on their own, if issues are minor. But they won't rewrite whole your submission.