elementary OS Patches

Personal patches for elementary OS packages — bug fixes and improvements that bother me enough to maintain them locally.

Note: Patches in this repo are AI-assisted and reviewed/tested by me. elementary OS does not accept AI contributions upstream, so these live here for anyone who finds them useful.

Packages

| Package | Patches | Description | |---------|---------|-------------| | io.elementary.notifications | series | Don't steal focus when a notification bubble appears on X11 |

Target: elementary OS 8 (Ubuntu 24.04 / noble).

Install a patched package (end users)

If you just want a patched build of one of these packages on your own machine — no contributing, no patch authoring — this is the short path.

1. Prerequisites (one time)

sudo apt install quilt git build-essential devscripts

apt source and apt build-dep need a deb-src line for the elementary archive enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list (or a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/). Then refresh:

sudo apt update

2. Clone and run

git clone https://github.com/svandragt/elementary-patches.git
cd elementary-patches
chmod +x ep _scripts/*.sh
cat quiltrc >> ~/.quiltrc        # one time

./ep apply io.elementary.notifications       # fetch source + apply patches
./ep build io.elementary.notifications --install

--install runs sudo dpkg -i on the freshly built .deb. The unpatched upstream package will be replaced; remove it later with sudo apt install --reinstall io.elementary.notifications to revert.

Reverting

sudo apt install --reinstall io.elementary.notifications

That pulls the unpatched upstream version back from the archive.

Contributor workflow

The end-user steps above already get you a working dev environment. From there:

Full command reference

ep apply   <package>              Fetch source and apply all patches
ep new     <package> <desc>       Create a new patch
ep edit    <package> <file>       Add a file to current patch and open editor
ep refresh <package>              Refresh top patch after editing
ep refresh <package> --rebase     Rebase all patches onto new upstream version
ep build   <package> [--install]  Build package, optionally install it
ep status  [package]              Show patch status

Adding a new patch

./ep apply   <package>                       # make sure source is ready
./ep new     <package> "fix crash on startup" # create the patch
./ep edit    <package> path/to/file.vala     # add file to patch and open in $EDITOR
./ep refresh <package>                        # finalise the patch
git add <package>/
git commit -m "<package>: fix crash on startup"

Updating after a new upstream release

./ep refresh io.elementary.notifications --rebase
# Fix any failures (quilt will stop and tell you)
git add io.elementary.notifications/
git commit -m "io.elementary.notifications: rebase patches onto 8.x"

Environment variables

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | WORK_DIR | ~/src | Where source packages are fetched | | EDITOR | nano | Editor used by ep edit |

Why not upstream?

These patches were written with AI assistance. elementary OS (and many projects) don't accept AI-generated contributions due to code review and licensing concerns. If a patch ever gets rewritten by a human and passes review, it could go upstream.

Licence

This repo is GPL-3.0 — same as the upstream packages it patches (io.elementary.notifications is GPL-3.0). Patch files are derivative works of the upstream source they apply to and inherit that licence; the wrapper tooling (ep, _scripts/) is licensed under GPL-3.0 too for simplicity.

See LICENSE for the full text.