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Adding Packages to ConanCenter

Join the Early Access Program

The first step in adding packages to ConanCenter is requesting access to the Early Access Program. To enroll in EAP, please send an email to [email protected] with the subject [EAP access] or add a comment on this GitHub issue. The EAP was designed to onboard authors to the new process.

With EAP, contribution of packages are now done via pull requests to the recipe found in the Github repository in https://github.com/conan-io/conan-center-index.

The specific steps to add new packages are:

• Fork the conan-center-index git repository, and then clone it.
• Create a new folder with the Conan package recipe (conanfile.py)
• Push to GitHub, and 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 center.conan.io.

More Information about Recipes

The conan-center-index (this repository) contains recipes for the conan-center repository.

To contribute with a Conan recipe into the conan-center repository you can submit a Pull Request to the master branch of this repository. The connected continuous integration system will generate binary packages automatically for the most common platforms and compilers. See the Supported Platforms and Configurations page to know the generated configurations. For a C++ library, the system is currently generating more than 100 binary packages.

⚠️ Note: This CI service is not a testing service, it is a binary building service for package releases. Unit tests shouldn't be built nor ran in recipes by default. Before submitting a PR it is mandatory to run at least a local package creation.

The CI system will also report with messages in the PR any error in the process, even linking to the logs to see more details and debug.

When pull requests are merged, the CI generated package binaries will be uploaded to ConanCenter. These packages won't contain the @user/channel part. You will be able to install them specifying only library_name/version as a requirement, omitting the @user/channel part. (Conan >= 1.21).

Previously existing packages in ConanCenter, with the full reference including @user/channel will still be available, but the previous process of “inclusion request” for getting them into Conan-center is now deprecated, and new contributions should follow this guide. Those packages will be gradually contributed to this repo to generate new binaries without the @user/channel.

How to submit a Pull Request

Before start

Make sure you are using the latest Conan client version, the recipes might evolve introducing features of the newer Conan releases.

The recipe folder

Create a new subfolder in the recipes folder with the name of the package in lowercase.

e.g:

.
+-- recipes
|   +-- zlib
|       +-- 1.2.8
|           +-- conanfile.py
|           +-- test_package
|       +-- 1.2.11
|           +-- conanfile.py
|           +-- test_package

The version folder/s

The system supports to use the same recipe for several versions of the library and also to create different recipes for different versions

• 1 version => 1 recipe

  When the recipes change significantly between different library versions and reusing the recipe is not worth it, you can create a folder for each version and create inside both the “conanfile.py” and the “test_package” folder:

  .
  +-- recipes
  |   +-- zlib
  |       +-- 1.2.8
  |           +-- conanfile.py
  |           +-- test_package
  
  

• N versions => 1 recipe

  Create a folder named all (just a convention) and put both the “conanfile.py” and the “test_package” folder there. With this approach, the “conanfile.py” won’t declare the version attribute.

  You will need to create a config.yml file to declare the matching between the versions and the folders. e.g:

  .
  +-- recipes
  |   +-- mylibrary
  |       +-- all
  |           +-- conanfile.py
  |           +-- test_package
          +-- config.yml
  

  config.yml file

  versions:
    "1.1.0":
      folder: all
    "1.1.1":
      folder: all
    "1.1.2":
      folder: all
  

• N versions => M recipes

  This is the same approach as the previous one, you can use one recipe for a range of versions and a different one for another range of versions. Create the config.yml file and declare the folder for each version.

The conanfile.py and test_package folder

In the folder/s created in the previous step, you have to create the conanfile.py and a test_package folder.

The conandata.yml

In the same directory than the conanfile.py, create a file named conandata.yml. This file has to be used in the recipe to indicate the origins of the source code. It must have an entry for each version, indicating the URL for downloading the source code and a checksum.

sources:
  "1.1.0":
    url: "https://www.url.org/source/mylib-1.0.0.tar.gz"
    sha256: "8c48baf3babe0d505d16cfc0cf272589c66d3624264098213db0fb00034728e9"
  "1.1.1":
    url: "https://www.url.org/source/mylib-1.0.1.tar.gz"
    sha256: "15b6393c20030aab02c8e2fe0243cb1d1d18062f6c095d67bca91871dc7f324a"

You must specify the checksum algorithm sha256. If your sources are on GitHub, you can copy the link of the "Download ZIP" located in the "Clone or download" repository, make sure you are in the correct branch or TAG.

Then in your conanfile.py method, it has to be used to download the sources:

 def source(self):
     tools.get(**self.conan_data["sources"][self.version])

Test the recipe locally

The system will use the conan-center hook to perform some quality checks. You can install the hook running:

    $ conan config install https://github.com/conan-io/hooks.git -sf hooks -tf hooks
    $ conan config set hooks.conan-center

The hook will show error messages but the conan create won’t fail unless you export the environment variable CONAN_HOOK_ERROR_LEVEL=40.

Call conan create . lib/1.0@ in the folder of the recipe using the profile you want to test.

Debugging failed builds

Go to the Error Knowledge Base page to know more.