README.md

Adding Packages to ConanCenter

ConanCenterIndex aims to provide the best quality packages of any open source project. Any C/C++ project can be made available by contributing a "recipe".

Getting started is easy. Try building an existing package with our developing recipes tutorial. To deepen you understanding, start with the How to provide a good recipe section. You can follow the three steps (:one: :two: :three:) described below! :tada:

Contents

• 1️⃣ Request access
• Inactivity and user removal
• 2️⃣ Creating a package
  • How to provide a good recipe
• 3️⃣ Submitting a Package
• The Build Service

1️⃣ Request access

The first step to add packages to ConanCenter is requesting access. To enroll in ConanCenterIndex repository, please write a comment requesting access in this GitHub issue #4. Feel free to introduce yourself and your motivation to join ConanCenter community.

This process helps ConanCenter against spam and malicious code. The process is not fully automated on purpose and the requests are generally approved on a weekly basis. Feel free to continue to step 2️⃣ while waiting for approval.

Note The requests are reviewed manually, checking the GitHub profile activity of the requester to avoid any misuse of the service. All interactions are subject to the expectations of the code of conduct. Any misuse or inappropriate behavior are subject to the same principals.

When submitting a pull request for the first time, you will be prompted to sign the CLA for your code contributions. You can view your signed CLA's by going to https://cla-assistant.io/ and signing in.

Inactivity and user removal

For security reasons related to the CI, when a user no longer contributes for a long period, it will be considered inactive and removed from the authorized user's list. For now, it's configured for 4 months, and it's computed based on the latest commit, not comments or opened issues. After that time, the CI bot will ask to remove the user name from the authorized users' list through the access request PR, which occurs a few times every week.

When you are interested in contributing again, simply ask again to be included in the issue #4. The process will be precisely like for newcomers.

2️⃣ Creating a package

Once you've successfully built an existing recipe following developing recipes tutorial. You are set to being adding a new package.

Make sure you have:

• Forked and then cloned the conan-center-index git repository.
• Make sure you are using a recent Conan client version, as recipes improve by introducing features of the newer Conan releases.

The easiest way to start is copying a template from our package_templates/ folder to the recipes/ folder. Rename the new folder following the project name guidelines. Read templates documentation to find more information.

Quickly, there's a few items to look at:

• Add only the latest version in the config.yml and conandata.yml
• Make sure to update the ConanFile attributes like license, description, etc...

In ConanCenter, our belief is recipes should always match upstream, in other words, what the original author(s) intended.

• Options should follow these recommendations as well as match the default value used by the upstream project.
• Package information, libraries, components should match as well. This includes exposing supported build system names.

Where dependencies are involved, there's no shortcuts, inspect the upstream's build scripts for how they are usually consumed. Pick the Conan generator that matches. The most common example is CMake's find_package that can be satisfied by Conan's CMakeDeps generator. There are a few things to be cautious about, many projects like to "vendor" other projects within them. This can be files checked into the repository or downloaded during the build process. These should be removed, see the Dependencies section for more information.

How to provide a good recipe

Take a look at existing recipes available in ConanCenterIndex which can be used as good examples, you can use them as the base for your recipe. The GitHub search is very good for matching code snippets, you can see if, how or when a function is used in other recipes.

Note: Conan features change over time and our best practices evolve so some minor details may be out of date due to the vast number of recipes.

More often than not, ConanCenter recipes are built in more configuration than the upstream project. This means some edge cases need minor tweaks. We strongly encourage everyone to contribute back to the upstream project. This reduces the burden of re-applying patches and overall makes the the code more accessible.

Read the docs! The FAQs are a great place to find short answers. The documents in this folder are written to explain each folder, file, method, and attribute.

1. Folders and Files
2. Sources and Patches
   1. conandata.yml format
3. ConanFile Attributes
4. Dependencies
5. Build and Package
   1. Revisit Patches
6. Test Package

The one place you are certain to find a lot of information is https://docs.conan.io, this has the documentation for everything in Conan. There are helpful tutorials for cross-build, detailed explication for profiles and settings and much much more!

3️⃣ Submitting a Package

To contribute a package, you can submit a Pull Request to this GitHub repository https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index.

The specific steps to submitting changes are:

• Build and test the new recipe in several combinations. Check developing recipes for tips.
• Commit and push to your fork repository then submit a pull request.
• Our automated build service will build 100+ different configurations, and provide messages that indicate if there were any issues found during the pull request on GitHub.

When the pull request is reviewed and merged, those packages are published to JFrog's ConanCenter and are made available for everyone.

The Build Service

The build service associated to this repository will generate binary packages automatically for the most common platforms and compilers. See the Supported Platforms and Configurations page for a list of generated configurations. For a C++ library, the system is currently generating more than 100 binary packages.

Note: This not a testing service, it is a binary building service for released packages. Unit tests shouldn't be built nor run in recipes by default, see the FAQs for more. Before submitting a pull request, please ensure that it works locally for some configurations.

• The CI bot will start a new build only after the author is approved. Your PR may be reviewed in the mean time, but is not guaranteed.
• The CI system will also report errors and build logs by creating a comment in the pull-request, the message will include links to the logs for inspecting.
• The Actions are used to lint and ensure the latest conventions are being used. You'll see comments from bots letting you know.

Packages generated and uploaded by this build service do not include any user or channel (we generally recommend using @user/channel for private package repositories as an easy way to distinguish them from public ones). Once the packages are uploaded, you will be able to install them using the reference as name/version so example conan install fmt/9.1.0@ for 1.x client or conan install --requires=fmt/9.1.0 for 2.x clients.