# Adding new projects to wrap
**If you don't have permissions to do something on this page, please
open issue against https://github.com/mesonbuild/wrapweb/issues to
let us know that you want to start new project.**
## Overview
The wrap provider service is a simple web service that makes it easy
to download build definitions for projects. It works in much the same
way as Debian: we take the unaltered upstream source package and add a
new build system to it as a patch. These build systems are stored as
Git repositories on GitHub. They only contain build definition
files. You may also think of them as an overlay to upstream source.
## Creator script
The WrapDB repository has a [helper
script](https://github.com/mesonbuild/wrapweb/blob/master/mesonwrap.py)
to generate new repositories, verify them and update them. The documentation below roughly explains
what it does to create a new wrap repository using plain shell commands.
## Choosing the repository name
Wrapped subprojects are used much like external dependencies. Thus
they should have the same name as the upstream projects. If the
project provides a pkg-config file, then the repository name should be
the same as the pkg-config name. Usually this is the name of the
project, such as `libpng` . Sometimes it is slightly different,
however. As an example the libogg project's chosen pkg-config name is
`ogg` instead of `libogg` , which is the reason why the repository is
named plain `ogg` .
## Adding new project to the Wrap provider service
Each project gets its own repo. It is initialized like this:
git init
git add readme.txt
git add LICENSE.build
git commit -a -m 'Create project foobar'
git remote add origin < repo url >
git push -u origin master
Note that this is the *only* commit that will ever be made to master branch. All other commits are done to branches.
Repo names must fully match this regexp: `[a-z0-9._]+` .
## Adding a new branch to an existing project
Create a new branch whose name matches the upstream release number.
git checkout master
git checkout -b 1.0.0
git push origin 1.0.0
(or from GitHub web page, remember to branch from master)
Branch names must fully match this regexp: `[a-z0-9._]+` .
## Adding a new release to an existing branch
Here is where the magic happens. Whenever a new commit is pushed into GitHub's project branch, a new wrap is generated with an incremented version number. All the old releases remain unaltered. New commits are always done via GitHub merge requests and must be reviewed by someone other than the submitter.
Note that your Git repo must *not* contain the subdirectory of the source release. That gets added automatically by the service. You also must *not* commit any source code from the original tarball into the wrap repository.
First you need to fork the repository to your own page. Then you can create the first Wrap commit that usually looks something like this.
tar xzf libfoo_1.0.0.tar.gz
git clone -b 1.0.0 git@github.com:yourusername/libfoo.git tmpdir
mv tmpdir/.git libfoo-1.0.0
rm -rf tmpdir
cd libfoo-1.0.0
git reset --hard
emacs upstream.wrap meson.build
< verify that your project builds and runs >
git add upstream.wrap meson.build
git commit -a -m 'Create wrap files for libfoo-1.0.0.'
git push origin 1.0.0
Now you can file a merge request. Remember to file it against branch
1.0.0 rather than master. GitHub should do this automatically.
## Changes to original source
The point of a wrap is to provide the upstream project with as few
changes as possible. Most projects should not contain anything more
than a few Meson definition files. Sometimes it may be necessary to
add a template header file or something similar. These should be held
at a minimum.
It should especially be noted that there must **not** be any patches
to functionality. All such changes must be submitted to upstream. You
may also host your own Git repo with the changes if you wish. The Wrap
system has native support for Git subprojects.
## Reviewing wraps
See [Wrap review guidelines ](Wrap-review-guidelines.md ).
