SailfishOS:Chum community repository

The SailfishOS:Chum community repository provides a collection of applications, tools and libraries compiled for various hardware architectures and Sailfish OS release versions.

The ambition is to become the principal software distribution platform for Sailfish OS.

In contrast to the software distribution model of the Jolla Store or OpenRepos, to which binary packages are uploaded by developers, at SailfishOS:Chum software is compiled and packaged into RPMs in a reproducible manner directly from its source code. The source code used for compiling and packaging is submitted by developers to OBS (Open Build Service), which generates multiple RPM files for various combinations of hardware architectures and Sailfish OS release versions.

This scheme ensures that the complete source code of all packages at SailfishOS:Chum is available and inspectable there, and that all packages are generated solely from this source code. Hence all software packages at SailfishOS:Chum are created in a transparent and fully traceable manner.

By collecting software for Sailfish OS in a single automated build system, collaboration between developers through common packaging of shared libraries etc. is fostered, duplication of work for keeping these common packages up-to-date is eliminated, and it becomes much easier to determine which pieces of software exist and which are missing at the Sailfish OS OBS. Additionally this eases tracing multiple and potentially layered dependencies ("dependency chains") which is crucial for keeping the software supply chains of complex packages up-to-date.

The SailfishOS:Chum repository is located at the Sailfish OS OBS: build.sailfishos.org/project/show/sailfishos:chum

This repository at GitHub is used for filing general issues and publishing documentation for SailfishOS:Chum.

For the etymological origin and meanings of the word "chum", see en.wikipedia.org:Chumming and en.wiktionary.org:chum.

User's guide

There are two different ways of using the SailfishOS:Chum repository:

• with the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application
• with the usual command line tools for package management, pkcon or zypper

How to install the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application

The easiest way to install the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application built for the CPU-architecture of a device and its installed Sailfish OS release fully automatically is the SailfishOS:Chum GUI Installer. Because it is hosted at OpenRepos it can be conveniently installed via Storeman. The SailfishOS:Chum GUI Installer can also be manually downloaded from OpenRepos, GitHub or SailfishOS:Chum and then installed, e.g. by pkcon install-local <local path of package>.

Alternatively a version of the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application for a specific CPU-architecture and Sailfish OS release can be manually selected and downloaded at chumrpm.netlify.app for manual installation.

Furthermore SailfishOS:Chum GUI application's individual RPMs are also provided at the SailfishOS:Chum repository, where they can be fully manually selected and fetched from, as the SailfishOS:Chum GUI Installer does in a fully automated manner and the web-interface at chumrpm.netlify.app semi-automated.

Important note: If you experience issues while or after installing the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application, do read the installation notes!

How to deploy the configuration for command line tools

For using the SailfishOS:Chum repository by command line tools, a sailfishos-chum-repo-config helper RPM, which solely provides an appropriate local repository configuration for utilising the SailfishOS:Chum repository, is available at OpenRepos, at chumrpm.netlify.app, at GitHub and SailfishOS:Chum.

Mind that installing the SailfishOS:Chum GUI application deploys the same local repository configuration, so your device is already set for using the SailfishOS:Chum repository with the usual command line tools for package management, then.

To utilise the SailfishOS:Chum repository using command line tools on your device, you have to …

1. install either of the aforementioned packages sailfishos-chum-gui or sailfishos-chum-repo-config.
2. refresh the package cache on your device as root user per pkcon refresh or zypper ref.
3. install any software packages you like from the SailfishOS:Chum repository as root user by executing pkcon install <package name> or zypper in <package name>. You can also search for available packages by executing pkcon search name <search string> or zypper se <search string>.

As software packages at SailfishOS:Chum have their vendor set to chum by default (but this can be overrridden in a package's spec file), for most packages it is easy to determine which ones are installed from the SailfishOS:Chum repository by executing:<br /> rpm -qa --queryformat '%{vendor}:%{name}\n' | fgrep chum

Developer's guide

There are no major restrictions imposed on software submitted to SailfishOS:Chum. Although one limitation is that submitted software should not interfere with any software distributed by Jolla as a part of Sailfish OS, which also means that updating or replacing libraries distributed by Jolla's repositories must be avoided. Note that Jolla's repositories provide far more software packages than the ones installed by default.

All kinds of software for Sailfish OS are welcome at SailfishOS:Chum, for example, actively maintained software for SFOS, abandoned software for SFOS, and tools and libraries which are missing on SFOS as distributed by Jolla. Depending on the type of software, the recommended way of submitting software to SailfisOS:Chum varies, as described in the sections below.

The overall process is as follows.

1. For the initial submission of a software package:
   • Make your software package successfully compile at the Sailfish OS OBS.
   • Submit your package to the SailfishOS:Chum:Testing repository sailfishos:chum:testing by using the "Submit package" action of OBS. A version has to be specified when submitting.
   • The sailfishos:chum:testing maintainers will accept or reject your request and check if your software package successfully builds at the SailfishOS:Chum:Testing repository. If all is fine, the package will be promoted to the main sailfishos:chum repository by the SailfishOS:Chum maintainers. If something went wrong, you will be notified to resolve the issue.
2. After a successful initial submission, you will be made maintainer of your software package in the sailfishos:chum:testing repository, which allows you to handle updates in a simplified manner:
   • For updating your package, prepare the source, then update the version information accordingly in the OBS service file _service at sailfishos:chum:testing: This will trigger a new build at OBS.
   • Check that your software package successfully builds at the SailfishOS:Chum:Testing repository. Note that this needs some patience and might require reloading the browser window or using osc blt at the command line to observe that OBS progresses.
   • Ultimately use the "Submit package" action to trigger promoting your package from sailfishos:chum:testing to sailfishos:chum: Fill the form with sailfishos:chum as the target repository, the target package field shall be left empty to reuse the existing name at sailfishos:chum:testing and the description can be left empty, as it is a free text field only for this submit request.

As a reference, see the maintainer's tasks document for a list of checks and balances performed by the SailfishOS:Chum maintainers.

Also note the documentation for the additional metadata for SailfishOS:Chum in RPM spec files.

Asking for help

If something is not clear or you become stuck in the process, feel free to ask for help via the IRC channel #sailfishos (you may contact piggz or rinigus there), the Sailfish OS forum, or filing an issue here at GitHub.

For an OBS primer, see our Getting Started with OBS document.

You may also ask someone else to package some software for you. Just be aware that for this to work out, you might need to provide some incentive.

Submitting actively maintained software

If a package is already compiled at the Sailfish OS OBS, simply use the "Submit package" action for the package and all its dependencies, which are not yet available as part of the SailfishOS:Chum repository or Jolla's RPM repositories.

If you are not using the Sailfish OS OBS yet, you should obtain an account there by following the instructions at [the Sailfish OS OBS front page](https://