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Thank you for your interest in contributing to Azure Linux. Whether you're fixing a typo, reporting a bug, or improving a package, every contribution matters and we're glad you're here.
Azure Linux is open source and built on top of the broader Linux ecosystem. This article describes where to contribute, how to get started, and what to expect along the way.
Important
Azure Linux contributions are scoped to Azure Linux on Azure scenarios only. Microsoft support and lifecycle commitments apply only to:
- Azure Linux Virtual Machines (VM) / Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) container host, and container images.
- Customizations built on top of a prebuilt Azure Linux image (for example, with Image Customizer).
Contributions targeting bare metal, ISO images, on-premises, other clouds, or images built from scratch from the Azure Linux sources on GitHub are out of scope.
Note
Azure Linux 4.0 is now in preview and is strictly limited to evaluation and testing purposes. It's not suitable for production use.
Ways to contribute
You can contribute to Azure Linux in several ways, depending on your interests and expertise:
- Contribute to documentation: Fix, improve, or expand guidance for running Azure Linux on Azure, including VMs, AKS, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, and container workloads.
- Contribute to code: Fix bugs, improve packages, or enhance tooling across the Azure Linux distro.
You can also contribute by reporting bugs, requesting new features, or providing feedback. Clear bug reports and well-articulated feature requests help the Azure Linux team identify issues and prioritize improvements effectively. For more information, see Report issues and request features for Azure Linux and Azure Linux official support options.
Recommended contribution path
Azure Linux is part of a larger open-source family. We build on and actively participate in the communities around us, most notably the Fedora Linux Project. When you contribute upstream, your work reaches more people, strengthens the ecosystem, and naturally flows back into Azure Linux as part of our regular update and release process.
We recommend the following approach to determine where your contribution should land:
- Start at the source. Does your change touch a package owned by another project, such as
systemd,binutils, orrust? Please bring it to that project's community first. They know the code best, and your improvement benefits every distribution that depends on it. - Then look at Fedora. Is your change a distribution-level packaging, integration, or policy change that would help multiple distros? The Fedora Linux Project is the right place. Azure Linux picks up those changes as part of our regular release process.
- Then bring it to Azure Linux. If the change is truly specific to Azure Linux, such as an Azure integration logic, our tooling, or our documentation, we'd love to see it in an Azure Linux repository.
Tip
When you open an Azure Linux PR that originated upstream, include a link to the upstream issue or PR. It speeds up the review by giving context to reviewers and showing the lineage of the change.
Choose the correct repository for your contribution
Azure Linux spans multiple repositories. Filing in the right place helps your contribution get reviewed faster. The following table shows the primary Azure Linux repositories and the types of changes that belong in each:
| What you want to change | Repository |
|---|---|
| Azure Linux | microsoft/azurelinux |
| Azure Linux image tools | microsoft/azure-linux-image-tools |
| Azure Linux dev tools | microsoft/azure-linux-dev-tools |
| Azure Linux documentation | MicrosoftDocs |
Community expectations
We're building Azure Linux together, and we want this space to be welcoming and productive for everyone.
This project adopts the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any questions or comments.