Arch Linux Ports#

Arch Linux Ports is a namespace for unofficial architectures ports until they are integrated in the main Arch Linux repositories.

This effort is meant to provide infrastructure and community-based support for architectures until they are fully supported by the main distribution. For additional information, please see RFC!32: “Arch Linux Ports”.

⚠️ Warning

No official support for ports

No port has been approved yet.
Please see the Contribution Guidelines for the current policy and scope.
Arch Linux only supports x86_64 within the official bugtracker and community channels.

General Ports discussion primarily occurs on IRC: #archlinux-ports

Contributions to this documentation can be submitted via merge requests at archlinux/ports/docs.

Contribution guidelines#

Protecting x86_64#

We do not want to compromise on our primary platform.
Clearly do not break or remove x86_64 behavior, functionality or features. Incompatible features or dependencies must be proposed in a way that preserves the functionality of our primary platform.

Non-intrusive#

Small, focused changes that are easy to understand at a glance and can be reasoned about even without building and running it on different architectures.

No downstream wizardry#

Complex, opaque, or heavy software patching is out of scope.
Carrying around massive software patches downstream isn’t feasible at this stage, save that for later and work together with upstream instead.

Merge-request indicator#

All secondary architecture related merge-requests must be flagged with the new pkg::ports GitLab label.
It’ll help separate them from the usual requests and allow interested packagers and contributors to filter on them globally, to help out others.

Manageable load#

Contributors must stick to small merge-request batches max 10 open merge requests per person.
All proposals must be sent manually, no fire-and-forget scripts.

Collaboration is expected.
If questions come up, we expect thoughtful responses from people who precisely know the changes they’re submitting.

Arch array#

When adapting packages for other architectures, the arch array should generally remain unchanged. However, specific exceptions apply for:

  • Split-packages that contain subpackages available only on limited architectures (requires pacman 7.1+, which added support for architecture-restricted split packages)
  • Packages that require architecture-specific source arrays like source_aarch64=()

For these exceptions, packages cannot simply be built using makepkg --ignorearch.

For more details, see the arch-dev-public mailing list discussion.

Out of scope#

non-x86_64 issues#

No issues or bug reports for non-x86_64.
If something’s broken with the PKGBUILD, you’ll need to sort it out and send a merge-request. Don’t file bugs in the tracker for other architectures.