What is packages?

This repository is a collection of community-maintained build scripts, configuration options, and patches for software that runs on OpenWrt. OpenWrt is a Linux-based operating system commonly used on routers and other embedded network hardware. This packages repository does not contain OpenWrt itself, it is a "feed," which is an add-on layer that extends an existing OpenWrt build environment with additional software options. The packages cover applications, modules, and libraries. When you have an OpenWrt system running, you can install pre-built versions of these packages directly using a tool called opkg, which is built into OpenWrt. Alternatively, developers who build OpenWrt from source can use the OpenWrt SDK to compile these packages themselves. To use this feed in a build setup, you run two commands against the OpenWrt build scripts: one to download the latest package definitions from this repository, and another to make all those definitions available for selection when building your OpenWrt image. The repository assumes you already have an OpenWrt build environment set up, it points to external documentation for that setup. The repository's own README is brief and does not describe individual packages or give an overview of how many packages are included or what categories they cover. Guidelines for people who want to contribute new packages or submit changes are in a separate CONTRIBUTING.md file. Given the repository's focus as infrastructure for an open-source router OS project, most of its content is in the Makefiles and patch files that define each individual package rather than in documentation.