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; fix notifications silently dropped after sleep/resume (GDK frame clock not ready, retry until compositor is up) | | gala | series | Stop crash loop from unbalanced WorkspaceManager.thaw_remove when a workspace is added outside a swipe gesture; prevent focus-stealing on attention demand | | io.elementary.terminal | series | Restore double-click on empty tab bar to open a new tab (GTK4 regression); open OSC 8 hyperlinks on ctrl-click | | pantheon-files | series | Double-click on empty tab bar opens a new tab (matches terminal behavior) | | appcenter | series | Don't show AppCenter in the dock with a "0" badge when there are no pending updates |

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 rebuild <package>|--all        Fetch latest source, re-apply patches, build and install
                                  (--no-install to only build, --force to ignore the
                                  up-to-date check)
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

The one-command path — rebuilds every patched package against whatever the archive currently ships:

./ep rebuild --all

Per package it fetches the latest source, re-extracts it pristine, re-applies the series (auto-refreshing patches that land with offsets/fuzz), updates VERIFIED, builds and installs. Pass --no-install to only build.

Builds can take a while, so each successful rebuild+install stamps $WORK_DIR/.ep-built-<package> with the source version and a hash of the patch series. While both are unchanged the package is reported as up to date and skipped — so ep rebuild --all is cheap to re-run. Pass --force to rebuild anyway. (The installed version can't be used for this check: a locally built .deb has the same version as the stock archive package.)

A patch that fails outright skips that package and the summary lists it for a manual rebase:

./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"

After a rebuild that refreshed patches, review and commit the changed .patch files the same way.

Verified-against version

Each package directory contains (or will contain after the next refresh) a VERIFIED file recording the upstream version the patch series was last refreshed against. It's a breadcrumb, not a lock — ep apply still pulls whatever apt source currently ships, but it warns when that version differs from the recorded one so you know to eyeball the result. ep refresh rewrites VERIFIED on success.

To record VERIFIED for every package whose patches already apply cleanly against the current archive, run the one-shot ./_scripts/backfill-verified.sh (optionally pass package names to limit it).

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. Permission is hereby granted to integrate the patches 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.