Make a PR to batocera.linux

Batocera is an open-source software, it's source code can be found at https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux. In order to contribute to the code, you can make a pull request with the changes you made to the OS.

Microsoft (the parent company of Github) has a pretty good tutorial for this using Git Bash on Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/contribute/get-started-setup-local

There are multiple steps to make a pull request:

1. Fork Batocera to your own repository
2. Install git on your machine
3. Clone your fork locally
4. Make the modifications locally
5. Build Batocera and test the modifications, fixing any issues that arise
6. Create a new local branch on your fork
7. Push your commits to the new branch
8. Make a pull request to batocera.linux containing those commits

The first time, you will need to fork the system and clone it locally. The next time, you will simply need to make your local copy up to date with the upstream branch.

To make a Pull Request, you first need to make a fork of batocera.linux:

1. Login to your Github account
2. Go to https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux
3. Click on the Fork button on the right

This will create a fork at https://github.com/<your Github username>/batocera.linux at your account respectively.

The most current instructions are available at Git's official documentation.

To surmise:

• On Ubuntu/other Debian-based distros: apt-get install git
• On Fedora: dnf install git
• On Arch: pacman -S git

If you're on another distro you probably already know how to install git.

git will typically be available in the official package repository for your distribution, though depending on some distributions this may be an incredibly old version. You can install a later version by adding a PPA:

• On Ubuntu/other Debian-based distros: add-apt-repository ppa:git-core/ppa and once successfully executed, apt update; apt install git

Other distros generally use more recent versions so this isn't as important.

Using Git on Windows is generally not recommended, as it is by default not compatible with objects in the file system such as symbolic links, folders with hidden attributes, line terminators in text files, etc. But if you know what you're doing and are willing to workaround these shortcomings, you can utilize Git Bash.

Download and install it. There will be multiple questions during installation, with short explanations of what they mean. Choose what you are most comfortable with. For instance, if you are already using Notepad++ to edit text documents, which saves line terminations correctly (compared to Notepad), then you don't need to worry about CR LF to LF conversion (just select “No conversion”). Once installation is complete, you will have Git Bash added to your Start menu. This will launch MinGW, which you can then use git commands as you normally would in any regular Bash terminal emulator:

One thing that cannot be worked around is symbolic links, Windows doesn't like them. Git will, by default, convert symlinks into ordinary files for you. It is recommended to simply not make any changes to any symbolic links in your PRs (you can check which files are symbolic links on the repository).

You have to clone this fork locally, the easiest way is to open a command line and type git clone https://github.com/<your Github username>/batocera.linux.

You then need to go into the created folder (which should be batocera.linux), once inside, you will need to tell it this is a fork of https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux using the following commands:

• git remote add upstream https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux.git
• git remote set-url upstream https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera.linux.git

Finally, you have to tell it the URL of your own fork itself using :

• git remote set-url origin https://github.com/YOURNAME/batocera.linux where YOURNAME is your github username.

You have some guidelines on this page to compile individual packages, a list of notable files and their location on a live install and this page for more general compilation of the whole Batocera Linux system.

You then need to make a local branch using git checkout -b Name-of-the-branch , once this is done, you have to commit your changes to it using git commit.

If you're finding differences where you haven't actually made them, make sure your submodules are updated. git submodule update --init.

Once all of this is done, commit them to your branch on your fork using git push --set-upstream origin Name-of-the-branch

You can now go into your Github fork link, and click on Pull Request. This will let you ask to merge the changes into the main repository.

Once you have set this up, you can simply make your own master branch up to date with the upstream master branch. To do this, you need to do:

1. git checkout master : Tells git to use the master branch
2. git fetch upstream : Tells git to grab every changes from the upstream repository
3. git rebase upstream/master : Tells git to make your branch up to date with the master branch of the upstream repository

You then make your changes, create a new branch using git checkout -b Name-of-the-branch and commit your changes to it like before. The rest doesn't change from the first time.