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Contributor Guide
elementary OS is developed as an Open Source project. Want to contribute code to elementary OS itself? Here are some tips.
Looking for documentation on creating your own apps? See Developer Documentation instead.

Restoring Original Packages

You can audit your system for files that have been changed from their originally installed packages:
1
sudo apt install debsums
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sudo debsums_init
Copied!
View changed files:
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sudo debsums -cs
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View which packages those files belong to:
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sudo debsums -c | xargs -rd '\n' -- dpkg -S | cut -d : -f 1 | sort -u
Copied!
Assuming that you've used --prefix=/usr when installing custom version you can restore them using:
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sudo apt install appname --reinstall
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WingPanel

When developing the Panel (codenamed WingPanel) or panel-related packages like the Applications Menu and indicators, you want to start WingPanel from the command line to view logs. WingPanel is automatically started and restarted by gnome-session. If wingpanel is stopped/killed twice within a minute, it will stop automatically restarting, and you can gather logs:
  1. 1.
    In Terminal run killall io.elementary.wingpanel twice to stop the current WingPanel
  2. 2.
    Start wingpanel with debug logging by running G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all io.elementary.wingpanel
To restore normal behavior simply logout and back in again to restart your session.

Gala

Gala is the window manager of elementary OS. If it crashes or freezes during development, it can be nonobvious how to recover. Here's how to do it:
  1. 1.
    Go to one of the virtual consoles by pressing: Ctrl+Alt+F1
  2. 2.
    Log in
  3. 3.
    If Gala didn't crash but froze, you can kill it by running killall gala
  4. 4.
    Restart Gala by running DISPLAY=:0 gala --replace &
  5. 5.
    Switch back to the graphical session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7
If Gala doesn't start, you can reinstall the latest stable version by running sudo apt install --reinstall gala.

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