Patching

Patching info

The script supports the automatic patching of libtorrent and qbittorrent when building, providing certain conditions are met. You can do it in two ways, local or via a GitHub repo. Let’s take a look at these methods.

Tip

Use the help command to get more information

./qbittorrent-nox-static.sh -h-pr

Local patching via boot strapping

Here we will look bootstrapping the build process to make patching simple

Note

Using this command the script will create the required directory structure using the current defaults

./qbittorrent-nox-static.sh -bs

The directory structure that will be created will look like this:

qbt-build/patches/qbittorrent/4.5.0
qbt-build/patches/libtorrent/v1.2.18

Place your patch file named patch inside the relevant directories. So it would look something like this:

qbt-build/patches/qbittorrent/4.5.0/patch
qbt-build/patches/libtorrent/v1.2.18/patch

Then the patch file will be automatically matched to the tag used by the script and loaded.

Using custom qBittorrent and libtorrent tags

You can change the defaults by using the qt and lt switches to specify a tag. So for example if you used this command:

bash ~/qbittorrent-nox-static.sh -qt master -lt RC_2_0 -bs

The boot strapped directory structure will look like this instead:

qbt-build/patches/qbittorrent/master
qbt-build/patches/libtorrent/RC_2_0

Caution

Remember to provide the same tags when using the build command or the patches won’t match the defaults.

bash ~/qbittorrent-nox-static.sh -qt master -lt RC_2_0 all

Git based patching

Instead of a local patch you can use github hosted patch files. Your patches need to be hosted in the root of the repo like this:

🔹 qbittorrent

patches/qbittorrent/master/patch
patches/qbittorrent/4.5.0/patch

🔹 libtorrent

patches/libtorrent/RC_2_0/patch
patches/libtorrent/RC_1_2/patch
patches/libtorrent/v1.2.12/patch

The all you do is use the pr switch when using the script. The repo URL is abbreviated to your username and repo:

bash ~/qbittorrent-nox-static.sh all -pr username/repo

Then the patch file will be automatically matched to the tag used by the script and loaded.

How to make a patch

Using qbittorrent as an example we will edit the src/base/bittorrent/session.cpp to apply some session defaults.

Download the relevant git repo:

git clone --no-tags --single-branch --branch release-4.5.0 --shallow-submodules --recurse-submodules --depth 1 https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent.git

Copy the file that we need to edit to our home directory.

cp qBittorrent/src/base/bittorrent/session.cpp ~/session.cpp

Now edit the ~/session.cpp. Once you have finished making your changes you can create a patch file using this command

diff -Naru qBittorrent/src/base/bittorrent/session.cpp ~/session.cpp > ~/patch

Then you place that patch file in the matching tag directory.

patches/qbittorrent/4.3.4.1/patch

Using a Github pull request or commit

First, it’s sensible to make sure the patch that we want to use is from a pull request on the same branch that we are building against. So when using release-4.5.0 we should use https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/tree/v4_5_x

You can see the branches for qBittorrent here - https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/branches

When you are on a commit or pull request you simply add .patch to the end of the url.

So here we take the pull request or commit URL

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/pull/18271

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/c924904308e806db6e1b321da18c1f91c4e8f8bf

and add .patch to it so it becomes this

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/pull/18271.patch

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/commit/c924904308e806db6e1b321da18c1f91c4e8f8bf.patch

You can download these using curl or wget and use these as patches in custom builds.