vcpkg PR Review Checklist

Revision: 1

Overview

This document provides an annotated checklist which vcpkg team members use to apply the "reviewed" label on incoming pull requests. If a pull request violates any of these points, we may ask contributors to make necessary changes before we can merge the changeset.

Feel free to create an issue or pull request if you feel that this checklist can be improved. Please increment the revision number when modifying the checklist content.

Checklist

You can link any of these checklist items in a GitHub comment by copying the link address attached to each item code.

c000001: No deprecated helper functions are used

See our Maintainer Guidelines and Policies for more information.

c000002: `"port-version"` field is updated

See our Maintainer Guidelines and Policies for more information.

c000003: New ports contain a `"description"` field written in English

A description only one or a few sentences long is helpful. Consider using the library's official description from their README.md or similar if possible. Automatic translations are acceptable and we are happy to clean up translations to English for our contributors.

See our manifest file documentation for more information.

c000004: No unnecessary comments are present in the changeset

See our Maintainer Guidelines and Policies for more information.

c000005: Downloaded archives are versioned if available

To ensure archive content does not change, archives downloaded preferably have an associated version tag that can be incremented alongside the port's "version".

c000006: New ports pass CI checks for triplets that the library officially supports

To ensure vcpkg ports are of a high quality, we ask that incoming ports support the official platforms for the library in question.

c000007: Patches fix issues that are vcpkg-specific only

If possible, patches to the library source code should be upstreamed to the library's official repository. Opening up a pull request on the library's repository will help to improve the library for everyone, not just vcpkg users.

c000008: New ports download source code from the official source if available

To respect library authors and keep code secure, please have ports download source code from the official source. We may make exceptions if the original source code is not available and there is substantial community interest in maintaining the library in question.

c000009: Ports and port features are named correctly

For user accessibility, we prefer names of ports and port features to be intuitive and close to their counterparts in official sources and other package managers. If you are unsure about the naming of a port or port feature, we recommend checking repology.org, packages.ubuntu.com, or searching for additional information using a search engine. We can also help our contributors with this, so feel free to ask for naming suggestions if you are unsure.

c000010: Library targets are exported when appropriate

To provide users with a seamless build system integration, please be sure to export and provide a means of finding the library targets intended to be used downstream. Targets not meant to be exported should be be marked private and not exported.

c000011: Ports do not use applications which modify the user's system

Ports should uphold vcpkg's contract of not modifying the user's system by avoiding applications which do so. Examples of these applications are sudo, apt, brew, or pip. Please use an alternative to these types of programs wherever possible.

c000012: Ports with system dependencies include an information message during installation

Some ports have library and tool dependencies that do not exist within vcpkg. For these missing dependencies, we ask that contributors add a message to the top of the port's portfile.cmake stating the missing dependencies and how to acquire them. We ask that the message is displayed before any major work is done to ensure that users can "early out" of the installation process as soon as possible in case they are missing the dependency.

Example:

message(
"${PORT} currently requires the following libraries from the system package manager:
    autoconf libtool
These can be installed on Ubuntu systems via sudo apt install autoconf libtool"
)

c000013: Manifest files are used instead of CONTROL files for new ports

Many existing ports use the CONTROL file syntax; while this syntax will be supported for some time to come, new ports should not use these. Any newly added port must use the manifest files.

We also recommend, when significant modifications are made to ports, that one switches to manifest files; however, this is not required. You may find vcpkg format-manifest useful.