Caution

The Packaging and Development guide is currently undergoing a major overhaul to bring it up to date. The current state you are seeing now is a preview of this effort.

The current version is unstable (changing URLs can occur at any time) and most content is not in properly reviewed yet. Proceed with caution and be aware of technical inaccuracies.

If you are an experienced packager and would like to contribute, we would love for you to be involved! See our contribution page for details of how to join in.

Sponsorship

Sponsorship is a process that allows developers without upload rights to submit their patches or new packages for review. If approved, an authorised developer will upload the changes on their behalf.

When can you request sponsorship?

Since upload rights are carefully managed to ensure system stability and security, new contributors don’t have them. So if you don’t have upload rights, you can request sponsorship in the following situations:

  • Making changes to existing packages or incremental updates.

  • Submitting security updates or bug fixes.

  • Introducing new packages to Ubuntu.

Requesting sponsorship

To request sponsorship, follow these steps:

  1. File an Ubuntu bug in Launchpad or follow up on an existing one.

  2. Add the necessary files, such as patches or .diff.gz files, according to the package’s requirements. If the change is a patch, follow the patch tagging guidelines. For security updates, follow the security update packaging guidelines described in Packaging.

  3. Link your changes to the bug. See Seeking Sponsorship.

  4. Subscribe ubuntu-sponsors or ubuntu-security-sponsors to the bug.

Sponsoring a patch

Members of the Ubuntu Sponsors and Ubuntu Security Sponsors teams have the right to sponsor patches or new packages. If you are interested in sponsoring, you can apply to join these teams.

Responding to feedback from sponsors

If a sponsor reviews your changes and requests further modifications, make the modifications to the branch you were working on, then commit them by running:

$ bzr commit

Now, push your modifications to Launchpad. Since bzr remembers the previous push location, you can run:

$ bzr push

After pushing your modifications, reply to the sponsor’s request explaining the modifications you made and request a re-review. You can also respond directly on the merge proposal page in Launchpad.

Resources