We are happy to announce the availability of Qubes OS contributed packages under the QubesOS-contrib GitHub Project. This is a place where our community can contribute Qubes OS related packages, additions and various customizations. Meanwhile, we provide the infrastructure and review process necessary to make them available easily and safely to users within standard Qubes installations.

Frédéric Pierret built the infrastructure based on a similar setup for building official packages. This means that it features the same Qubes build security measures, including keeping the signing keys separate in a dedicated VM, downloading packages over Tor, publishing build logs in a non-spoofable way and more. Frédéric is also the maintainer of QubesOS-contrib. The source code repositories of the packages and infrastructure-related parts are also hosted under QubesOS-contrib.

To contribute a package, follow the process described at package contributions. You will find a few helpful tips there, including a skeleton repository with example RPM packaging and Qubes Builder integration. Since the project has been running for some time already, there are already some submitted packages available there. To name a few:

You can find the full list at QubesOS-contrib.

If you want to install one of these packages, first you need to enable the repository in your system (dom0 and/or templates). This can be done by installing the qubes-repo-contrib package. This package includes the repository definition and keys necessary to download, verify, and install QubesOS-contrib packages.

In dom0, use qubes-dom0-update:

sudo qubes-dom0-update qubes-repo-contrib

In a Fedora-based template, use dnf:

sudo dnf install qubes-repo-contrib

In a Debian-based template, use apt:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install qubes-repo-contrib