Packaging Guide

Notes for package maintainers

  1. Please use our tagged releases, not master!

  2. Do not package certbot-compatibility-test as it’s only used internally.

  3. To run tests on our packages, you should use pytest by running the command python -m pytest. Running pytest directly may not work because PYTHONPATH is not handled the same way and local modules may not be found by the test runner.

  4. If you’d like to include automated renewal in your package:

  • certbot renew -q should be added to crontab or systemd timer.

  • A random per-machine time offset should be included to avoid having a large number of your clients hit Let’s Encrypt’s servers simultaneously.

  • --preconfigured-renewal should be included on the CLI or in cli.ini for all invocations of Certbot, so that it can adjust its interactive output regarding automated renewal (Certbot >= 1.9.0).

  1. jws is an internal script for acme module and it doesn’t have to be packaged - it’s mostly for debugging: you can use it as echo foo | jws sign | jws verify.

  2. Do get in touch with us. We are happy to make any changes that will make packaging easier. If you need to apply some patches don’t do it downstream - make a PR here.