The first step in adding packages to ConanCenter is requesting access to the Early Access Program. To enroll in EAP, please write a comment requesting access in this GitHub issue. The EAP was designed to onboard authors to the new process.
All EAP requests are reviewed and approved (or denied) every week, thus your request can take one week to be approved, so don't worry. This process helps conan-center-index against spam and malicious code.
The contribution of packages is done via pull requests to the recipes found in this Github repository 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 JFrog ConanCenter.
The conan-center-index (this repository) contains recipes for the remote conan-center repository. This remote is added by default to a clean installation of the Conan client.
Recipes are contributed by opening pull-requests to this conan-center-index repository as it is explained in the section below.
When pull requests are merged, the CI will upload the generated packages to JFrog ConanCenter. Packages generated and uploaded by this build service don't include any user or channel (existing references with any @user/channel should be considered as deprecated in favor of packages without it). Once the packages are uploaded, you will be able to install them using the reference as name/version (requires Conan >= 1.21): conan install cmake/3.18.2@.
The CI bot will start a new build only after being approved in EAP. Your PR can be reviewed in the middle time, but is not mandatory.
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.
To contribute a Conan recipe into the conan-center-index repository you can submit a Pull Request. The build service associated to this repo 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 package releases. Unit tests shouldn't be built nor run in recipes by default. Before submitting a pull request, please ensure that it works locally for some configurations.
The pipeline will report errors and build logs by creating a comment in the pull-request after every commit. The message will include links to the logs for inspecting.
Make sure you are using the latest Conan client version, as recipes might evolve introducing features of the newer Conan releases.
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 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 theversionattribute.You will need to create a
config.ymlfile to declare the matching between the versions and the folders. e.g:. +-- recipes | +-- mylibrary | +-- all | +-- conanfile.py | +-- test_package +-- config.ymlconfig.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.ymlfile and declare the folder for each version.
In the folder/s created in the previous step, you have to create the conanfile.py and a test_package folder.
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])
The recipes available in CCI can be used as good examples, you can use them as the base for your recipe.
If you are looking for header-only projects, you can take a look on rapidjson, rapidxml, and nuklear. Also, Conan Docs has a section about how to package header-only libraries.
For C/C++ projects which use CMake for building, you can take a look on szip and recastnavigation.
However, if you need to use autotools for building, you can take a look on mpc, libatomic_ops, libev.
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.
All hook checks will print a similar message:
[HOOK - conan-center.py] post_source(): [LIBCXX MANAGEMENT (KB-H011)] OK [HOOK - conan-center.py] post_package(): ERROR: [PACKAGE LICENSE] No package licenses found
Call conan create . lib/1.0@ in the folder of the recipe using the profile you want to test. For instance:
cd conan-center-index/recipes/boost/all
conan create . 1.74.0@
The hooks are updated from time to time, so it's worth keeping your own copy of the hooks updated regularly. To do this:
conan config install
Go to the Error Knowledge Base page to know more about Conan Center hook errors.
Some common errors related to Conan can be found on troubleshooting section.