There can be a huge discrepancy in how packages for a single project are named and versioned in different repositories, so Repology needs a flexible ruleset in order to overcome the differences, match packages, and make versions comparable.
You are welcome to submit pull requests with the rules you need. Here's a quick pointer of how to add specific rules:
- Choose a target name (prefer the least ambiguous and/or most widely used name)
- Open the corresponding yaml file under
800.renames-and-merges/
(if there's no existing yaml file relevant to your package, use the file named with the first letter of your target name, likea.yaml
) - Add a rule like
- { setname: <target name>, name: <original name> }
- Open the corresponding yaml file under
900.version-fixes/
- Add a rule like:
- { name: <package name>, ver: <bad version>, ignore: true }
- Consider using a
verpat
with a regular expression to match similar bad versions which may appear in the future. Examples:verpat: "20[0-9]{6}"
to match dates (20110323
)verpat: "20[0-9]{2}\\.[0-9]{2}\\.[0-9]{2}"
same, but for delimited date, (2010.03.23
)verpat: ".*20[0-9]{6}.*"
to match dates anywhere in the version (1.0.20110323
)verpat: "[0-9a-f]{7}"
match something resembling a git commit (a7b823f
)verpat: "[0-9]{4,}"
match something resembling a build or revision number (12345
)
- Open the corresponding yaml file under
850.split-ambiguities/
- Add a set of rules which distinguish packages, such as:
- { name: <ambiguous name>, wwwpart: <part of the homepage url>, setname: <specific name> }
- { name: <ambiguous name>, category: <category>, setname: <specific name> }
- { name: <ambiguous name>, verpat: <version pattern>, setname: <specific name> }
- { name: <ambiguous name>, ruleset: <families>, setname: <specific name> }
as a last resort
Things to know if you're submitting a pull request or have push access to this repository.
- Repology is currently set up to automatically pull the latest ruleset
from the
master
branch in this repository on each update, so everything committed here will be automatically applied to Repology in several hours. - Repology runs
make check
after updating the repository, and if it fails, rolls back to the latest good commit, so it's somewhat protected from a broken ruleset. - In the worst case, a broken ruleset will prevent Repology from updating until the problem is resolved.
- Still, please run
make check
before committing, and/or install the git hook inscripts/pre-push
, which runs it for you (you can copy it into.git/hooks
or just runmake install-hook
). - The checker script requires the Python modules
voluptuous
andPyYAML
.pip install PyYAML voluptuous
should install them for you. - In general, stay close to the style already used in the ruleset, use existing rules as examples, keep it simple and have fun!
- If in doubt, you can always just submit a report from the package's page on the website and avoid all the work!
Rules are stored in a set of files in YAML format,
a flexible human-friendly markup format for structured data.
Each rule is a single item of a big array, and may be written in a single or
multiple lines (depending on what's more convenient for the particular
case). For example, the following rule renames etracer
into extreme-tuxracer
:
- { name: etracer, setname: extreme-tuxracer }
which is the same as:
- name: etracer
setname: extreme-tuxracer
Each rule has a set of keywords which specify how a package is matched (by name, version, repository, category etc.) and how it is modified (package is renamed, version scheme is changed, flags are applied, etc.).
Rule order matters, as multiple rules may match a single package, and they are applied in order. Furthermore, changes applied by earlier rules affect further matches: for instance, if a package is renamed, the new name will be matched for the following rules.
While rules are basically arbitrary, it's practical though to attribute each rule to a specific class of action, the most distinctive of which are:
- Rename or merge rules. Match a name, and set another name. The main purpose
is to merge differently-named packages into the same project. For example,
etracer
,extremetuxracer
,extreme-tuxracer
→extreme-tuxracer
. - Split rules. Match a name and some additional property (version, homepage
or repository), and set another name. Used to split similarly-named
packages of different projects. For example,
clementine
→clementine-wm
,clementine-player
. - Version fixes. Match a name but do not change it; instead, change versions
or set some version-related flags. Used to fix incorrect versioning scheme
(
v1.0
→1.0
), mark some versions as devel (such as beta versions), or ignore some versions (e.g. snapshots like20130523
when there are official versions like1.0
).
The ruleset is split into several distinctive parts, mostly based on the functional class of rules described above. They are arranged in such a way that when adding a rule into a specific part you don't need to be aware of the rest of the ruleset.
-
100.prefix-suffix - normalization of repository specific prefixes and suffixes which are not part of the meaningful package name. Such as removal of
lib32-
prefixes. -
2xx.handpicked - a block where access to unmodified package names is needed, such as manual whitelists or blacklists.
-
[45]xx.wildcard - wildcard rules which affect a lot of packages. These mostly handle modules for specific languages such as Perl (which may be named like
p5-Foo-Bar
orlibfoo-bar-perl
in different repositories) by adding distinctive prefix (perl:
in this case) to them, so they do not conflict with modules for other languages and other software.There are three subsets here:
- pure rules which are known to not have any false positives
(e.g. packages from
CPAN
are always perl modules). - exceptions for the wildcard rules
- wildcard rules themselves
- pure rules which are known to not have any false positives
(e.g. packages from
-
750.exceptions - the small set of remaining exceptions. If a package needs a rule here, it's most positively incorrectly named.
-
800.renames-and-merges - pure merge rules
-
850.split-ambiguities - pure split rules
-
900.version-fixes - pure version fixes
-
950.split-branches - additional split section for projects which have multiple development branches which are incompatible and may present in a single repository at the same time for compatibility purposes. For example,
gtk2
andgtk3
. -
There are also some fixme subsets which are remainings of the previous generation of the ruleset. These files will eventually be refactored and removed.
This may seem complex, but in practice the mostly used rulesets are 800, 850 and 900, which cleanly correspond to three functional classes of rules described in the previous section.
Other parts of the ruleset may need attention when new repositories are introduced.
As already mentioned, the keywords that comprise rules are related to either matching packages, or modifying them. Below are detailed descriptions for all of them.
Each repository that Repology supports has a set of rulesets associated with
it. For instance, all Debian-based distros have the ruleset debuntu
. This may
be used to only match packages in specific repositories, but without the need
to chase a specific repository version. You may look up repositories and
their details in the repos.d directory of the main Repology
repository.
You may specify a list of rulesets to match any of them.
- { ruleset: freebsd, ... }
- { ruleset: [ arch, openbsd ], ... }
Disable rule matching for specified ruleset(s).
# applies to all Debian derivatives, but not Deepin
- { ruleset: debuntu, noruleset: deepin, ... }
Deprecated. Same as ruleset, and may be just changed into it.
Matches package category(ies). Note that category information is not available for all repositories, and each repository may have its own set of categories.
- { category: games, ... }
- { category: [ mail-client, mail-filter, mail-mta ], ... }
Matches package maintainer(s). The matching is case-insensitive.
- { maintainer: "[email protected]" }
Match exact package name(s).
- { name: firefox, ... }
- { name: [postgresql-client, postgresql-server, postgresql-contrib], ... }
Matches package name against a regular expression. The whole name is matched. May contain captures.
- { namepat: "swig[0-9]+", ... }
Matches exact package version(s).
- { name: firefox, ver: "50.0.1", ... }
The opposite of ver: matches if the package version is none of specified version(s).
- { name: firefox, notver: ["50.0.1", "50.0.2"] }
Matches a package version name against a regular expression. The whole version is matched. Note that you need to escape periods, which mean "any symbol" in regular expressions. Matching is case-insensitive.
- { name: firefox, verpat: "50\\.[0-9]+", ... }
- { name: firefox, verpat: "50\\..*", ... }
Matches the number of components (dot-separated parts) of a version.
- { name: gimp, vercomps: 3, ...} # matches 1.2.3, but not 1.2 or 1.2.3.4
Matches versions longer than a given number of components (dot-separated parts).
Mostly useful to match broken version schemes that add extra version components.
- { name: gimp, verlonger: 3, ...} # 2.9.8.12345 is something unofficial
Compares version to a given one and matches if it is:
- vergt: greater (>)
- verge: greater or equal (≥)
- verlt: lesser (<)
- verle: lesser or equal (≤)
- vereq: equal
- verne: not equal
# match git >= 2.16
- { name: git, verge: "2.16", ...}
Be careful when using this with regard to pre-release versions:
1.0beta1
is lesser than 1.0
, so it won't match verge: 1.0
.
You may use verpat instead.
Similar to the verXX family, but checks how a package version relates
to a specified release. A release includes all pre-releases and
post-releases with a given prefix; e.g. releq: "1.0"
would match
1.0alpha1
, 1.0
, 1.0patch
, 1.0.1
, but not 0.99
and 1.1
.
Matches the package homepage against a regular expression. Note that
unlike namepat and verpat, a partial match is allowed here.
Also note that dots should be escaped with double slash,
as .
means "any character" in regular expressions.
- { name: firefox, wwwpat: "mozilla\\.org", ... }
Matches when a package homepage contains given substring. This is usually more practical than wwwpat as in most cases you just need to match an URL part and don't need complex patterns, and you don't need to worry about escaping here. Matching is case-insensitive.
- { name: firefox, wwwpart: "mozilla.org", ... }
Matches when a package summary contains a given substring. Useful as an alternative to wwwpart for cases where the package homepage is not available. Matching is case-insensitive.
- { name: firefox, summpart: "browser", ... }
Matches when a package has the p_is_patch
flag set
(see the p_is_patch
action below).
Effectively rename the package. You may use the $0
placeholder to
substitute original name, or $1
, $2
etc. to substitute the contents
of the corresponding captures of the regular expression used in namepat.
Note that you don't need to use neither name nor namepat for
$0
to work, but you must have namepat with corresponding
captures to use $1
and so on.
# etracer→extreme-tuxracer
- { name: etracer, setname: extreme-tuxracer }
# aspell-dict-en→aspell-ru, aspell-dict-ru→aspell-ru etc.
- { namepat: "aspell-dict-(.*)", setname: "aspell-$1" }
# all packages in dev-perl Gentoo category are prepended `perl:`
# Locale-Msgfmt→perl:Locale-Msgfmt
- { ruleset: gentoo, category: dev-perl, setname: "perl:$0" }
Changes the version of the package. As with setname, you may
use the placeholders $0
, $1
, etc.
# remove bogus leading version component
- { verpat: "0\\.(.*)", setver: $1 }
Set to true
to completely remove a package. It will not appear
anywhere in Repology. Set to false
to undo.
# a metapackage which does not refer to any real project, we don't need it
- { name: "x11-fonts", remove: true }
Set to true
to mark the version of a matched package as a development or
unstable version, so it does not make the latest stable version be marked
as outdated. Set to false
to undo.
# mark versions with odd second component as devel
- { name: gnome-terminal, verpat: "[0-9]+\\.[0-9]*[13579]\\..*", devel: true }
A project may use two parallel versioning schemes, one of which contains additional version components, such as a build number:
0.17
, 0.17.13509
, 0.17.13541
, 0.18
, 0.18.16131
Normally, 0.18.16131
would be considered more recent than 0.18
,
but if these refer to the same version, this is not desired behavior.
In such case, a version scheme containing extra components
(e.g. one which compares greater) may be marked as altver,
which would allow both 0.18
and 0.18.16131
to be considered the latest,
and both to be marked as outdated by the presence of either 0.19
or 0.19.x
.
- { name: freecad, verlonger: 3, altver: true }
Similar to altver, but for the case where versioning schemes do not have a common prefix and are totally incompatible:
3.2.1
, 3207
, 3.2.2
, 3211
Marking either of the schemes with this flag results in completely independent processing,
which would allow both 3.2.2
and 3211
to be treated as the newest version.
- { name: sublime-text, verpat: "[0-9]+", altscheme: true }
Set to true
to ignore specific package versions. This is meant for the
cases where comparison is not possible - ignored versions are excluded from
comparison and do not affect the status of other versions. There are multiple
ignore flavors:
rolling
- the package is always fetched from the latest snapshot or VCS master/trunk. Its version has no meaning (like Gentoo's9999
), and may contain repository-specific formats such as a commit hash, revision or date.noscheme
- there's no official versioning scheme. Repositories may use random versions or dates, there's no point comparing them.incorrect
- known incorrect version (e.g. version which was not released yet)untrusted
- used for repositories which are known for providing incorrect versions, to ignore them proactively. It's a common pattern to create a pair ofincorrect
rules matching specific versions, and anuntrusted
rule for the following versions in a given repository.ignored
- general ignore actionsuccessor
- currently an alias fordevel
, used to convey the additional meaning of this being a fork of an unmaintained original projectdebianism
- currently an alias fordevel
, used to convey the additional meaning of this package using a distribution maintained at Debian (probably with version addendum)snapshot
- currently alias forignored
# Fedora was known to use "6.0.0" version before it was actually released
# mark as incorrect and prevent future problems
- { name: llvm, ver: "6.0.0", ruleset: fedora, incorrect: true }
- { name: llvm, ruleset: fedora, untrusted: true }
Set to true
to indicate that this project uses p
letter in the version
to indicate post- or patch releases. This fixes version comparison, as
by default p
is treated as pre-release.
# sudo 1.8.21p2 > 1.8.21
- { name: sudo, p_is_patch: true }
Set to true
to indicate that this project uses any letter in the version
to indicate post- releases.
# rb here denotes a patchset, treat is as such
- { name: webalizer, verpat: ".*rb.*", any_is_patch: true }
Set to true
to force the package version to compare lower than
any other package version. Useful to handle upstream versioning
schema change when new versions compare lower than legacy ones.
Set to false
to undo.
# when 0.20 follows 0.193:
- { version: "0.193", sink: true }
Result: 0.20 (newest)
> 0.193 (outdated)
Set to true
to force the package to be outdated, even if it
classifies as the most recent. Note that this does not lead to
another version being selected as newest. Useful to convey that
a version is outdated even when there are no newer versions (for
instance, when a project is superceded by another project).
Set to false
to undo.
# when 0.20 follows 0.193:
- { version: "0.193", outdated: true }
Result: 0.193 (outdated)
> 0.20 (outdated)
Set to true
to force the package to be legacy instead of outdated.
Set to false
to undo. Useful when a specific repository purposely contains
an outdated version of a specific project for compatibility purposes.
- { name: ruby-slack-notifier-1, ruleset: aur, legacy: true }
Set to true
to prevent the package from ever having legacy status.
This is useful for marking packages which declare to be of development
version, but are nevertheless outdated.
- { name: ffmpeg-git, nolegacy: true }
Output a given warning when matched.
# will catch unexpected versions
- { name: gtk, verpat: "1\\..*", setname: gtk1 }
- { name: gtk, verpat: "2\\..*", setname: gtk2 }
- { name: gtk, verpat: "3\\..*", setname: gtk3 }
- { name: gtk, verpat: "4\\..*", setname: gtk4 }
- { name: gtk, warning: "Neither of gtk1,2,3,4 - need a new rule or some weirdness is going on" }
# will trigger a warning if new project called "tesseract" appears
# ...or website changes, or just a package without website defined appears,
# so it'll require another condition
- { name: tesseract, setname: tesseract-game, wwwpart: tesseract.gg }
- { name: tesseract, setname: tesseract-ocr, wwwpart: tesseract-ocr }
- { name: tesseract, warning: "Please add rule for tesseract" }
Flavors are used to distinguish a set of packages denoting multiple versions of a project and a set of packages denoting a multiple parts or variants of a project. Consider an example:
foo1 1.0
andfoo2 2.0
merged intofoo
. In this case they denote multiple versions of the same project, flavors are not needed here andfoo1
will havelegacy
status.foo-client 1.0
andfoo-server 1.1
merged intofoo
. In this case they denote parts of the same project, which are expected to be of the same version. Flavors should be used in this case, sofoo-client
will have theoutdated
status.
Flavors are plain strings and may be arbitrary, for example client
and server
in the last example. You may specify a flavor explicitly,
or use the true
value to make the flavor be taken from the package name.
- { name: postgresql-client, setname: postgresql, addflavor: client }
- { name: postgresql-server, setname: postgresql, addflavor: server }
# This works too
- { name: [postgresql-client, postgresql-server], setname: postgresql, addflavor: true }
Set to true
to remove all previously added flavors.
Set to true
to stop ruleset processing right after the current rule.
Consider this a legacy feature; it should not be needed.
Takes a pattern and replacement strings, and applies them to the package name. Used for low-level normalization.
# slashes in package names are not allowed
- { replaceinname: { "/": "-" } }
# also useful for some repositories
- { replaceinname: { " ": "-" } }
Converts a package name to lowercase. This is called once in the very beginning of the ruleset. The purpose of having this as a rule action is to be able to have exceptions, e.g. packages which should be distinguished solely by the case of their names.
- { tolowername: true }
Changes the subrepo property of the package. As with setname,
you may use the placeholders $0
, $1
, etc.
# split subrepo name from package name
- { namepat: "([^-]+)-(.*)", setsubrepo: $1, setname: $2 }
For additional flexibility, a mechanism exists to toggle some rules based on the previous rules.
Sets a virtual flag (arbitrary string) which only exists for the duration of rule processing, and may be checked in the following rules.
- { name: python, addflag: not_python_module }
Only matches if the specified flag is (or is not) set.
- { name: python, addflag: not_python_module }
...
# will add "python:" prefix to all packages in category "python",
# but not for "python" package
- { category: python, noflag: not_python_module, setname: "python:$0" }
These annotations do not affect package processing, but are related to ruleset maintenance.
Indicates that a rule needs manual maintenance. For example, when a development version cannot be determined from the version schema, one would need to revisit and update the version occasionally.
- { name: tor, verge: "0.3.4", devel: true, maintenance: true }
Indicates that a rule should not be removed even if it doesn't match any packages. That is, a rule is likely to be useful sometime in the future.
Indicates that a rule may be removed if it doesn't match any packages.
GPLv3 or later, see COPYING.