Publishing Packages

Anyone with a Developer Hub account and a role in a publisher can ship Debian packages to LeiOS users. This page walks through the process and the checks your package has to pass.

Before you start

You need:

a Developer Hub account (ask on Discord),
a publisher you are a member of, with at least the Developer role,
a .deb package built for amd64, arm64, or all architectures.

Prepare your package

When you upload a build, the repository inspects it with dpkg --info and rejects it unless these fields match what you entered on the Hub.

Field in the `.deb`	Must match
`Package`	The package name on the Hub, without the publisher prefix.
`Version`	The version of the release you upload to.
`Architecture`	The architecture you upload for: `amd64`, `arm64` or `all`.
`Maintainer`	The publisher owner's display name and email. See below.

You can check the fields of a package locally:

dpkg --info my-package_1.2.0-1_amd64.deb

The Maintainer field

Maintainer must be exactly <display name> <<email>> of the publisher's owner, as shown in their Hub account. For example, if the owner is "Jane Doe" with jane@example.com:

debian/control

Maintainer: Jane Doe <jane@example.com>

Versions and the `leios` suffix

Versions follow the usual Debian rules, except that they must start with a digit and epochs (1:) are not supported. To mark a LeiOS-specific build of software that also exists elsewhere, add a leios suffix with up to three numeric parts:

Version	Valid
`1.2.0-1`	Yes
`1.2.0-1leios1`	Yes
`1.2.0-1leios1.2.3`	Yes
`1.2.0-1leios`	No: `leios` must be followed by a number.
`1.2.0-1leios1.2.3.4`	No: at most three numeric parts.

Some packages are flagged as requiring a LeiOS patch. Every release of such a package must carry the leios suffix.

Publish a release

Create the package

On the Hub, create a package under your publisher. Its name must match the Package field of your .deb.

Create a release

Add a release with the exact version from your .deb and a changelog. The changelog is required and can be up to 10,000 characters.

Upload the builds

Upload one .deb per architecture, or a single all build. Each file can be up to 1 GB. The repository runs the checks above, adds the package to its archive, and publishes it to the testing suite.

Request promotion to stable

Once the release has been tested, request promotion to stable. A LeiOS admin reviews the request. Approved packages are included in the next LeiOS release and published to the stable suite. See Release Channels.

Troubleshooting

The upload is rejected because a field doesn't match. Compare dpkg --info with the values on the Hub. The Maintainer field is the most common cause: it has to name the publisher's owner, not the person uploading.

"Package requires leios patch suffix in version". The package is flagged as requiring a LeiOS patch. Add a leios<N> suffix to the version and rebuild.

"Package release with this version already exists". Versions are immutable. Bump the version, for example from -1leios1 to -1leios2, and upload a new release.

"Package release already contains a release for this architecture". Each release accepts one build per architecture. Publish a new version instead of replacing a build.