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Silver platter

Automate the creation of merge proposals for scriptable changes

From jelmer·Updated June 17, 2026·View on GitHub·

Silver-Platter makes it possible to contribute automatable changes to source code in a version control system ([codemods](https://github.com/jelmer/awesome-codemods)). The project is written primarily in Rust, distributed under the GNU General Public License v2.0 license, first published in 2018. Key topics include: bzr, git, merge-proposal, pull-request, pull-requests.

Latest release: v0.8.4
April 23, 2026View Changelog →

Silver-Platter

<div align="center"> <img src="https://github.com/jelmer/silver-platter/blob/master/logo.png" alt="Silver-Platter logo" width="200px"/> </div>

Silver-Platter makes it possible to contribute automatable changes to source
code in a version control system
(codemods).

It automatically creates a local checkout of a remote repository,
makes user-specified changes, publishes those changes on the remote hosting
site and then creates a pull request.

In addition to that, it can also perform basic maintenance on branches
that have been proposed for merging - such as restarting them if they
have conflicts due to upstream changes.

Silver-Platter powers the Debian Janitor and
Kali Janitor. However, it is an independent project
and can be used fine as a standalone tool. The UI is still a bit rough around
the edges, I'd be grateful for any feedback from people using it - please file
bugs in the issue tracker at https://github.com/jelmer/silver-platter/issues/new.

Installation

bash
# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/jelmer/silver-platter cd silver-platter # Build and install using Cargo cargo build --release cargo install --path .

Prerequisites

  • Rust toolchain (install via rustup)
  • Git and/or Bazaar (depending on repositories you work with)
  • Python 3.9+ (for the Python bindings, optional)

Getting Started

To log in to a code-hosting site, use svp login:

shell
svp login https://github.com/

The simplest way to create a change as a merge proposal is to run something like:

shell
svp run --mode=propose ./framwork.sh https://github.com/jelmer/dulwich

where framwork.sh makes some modifications to a working copy and prints the
commit message and body for the pull request to standard out. For example:

shell
#!/bin/sh sed -i 's/framwork/framework/' README.rst echo "Fix common typo: framwork ⇒ framework"

If you leave pending changes, silver-platter will automatically create a commit
and use the output from the script as the commit message. Scripts also
create their own commits if they prefer - this is especially useful if they
would like to create multiple commits.

Recipes

To make this process a little bit easier to repeat, recipe files can be used.
For the example above, we could create a framwork.yaml with the following
contents:

yaml
--- name: framwork command: |- sed -i 's/framwork/framework/' README.rst echo "Fix common typo: framwork ⇒ framework" mode: propose merge-request: commit-message: Fix a typo description: markdown: |- I spotted that we often mistype *framework* as *framwork*.

To execute this recipe, run:

shell
svp run --recipe=framwork.yaml https://github.com/jelmer/dulwich

See recipe.example.yaml for an example recipe with plenty of comments.

In addition, you can run a particular recipe over a set of repositories by
specifying a candidate list.
For example, if candidates.yaml looked like this:

yaml
--- - url: https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich - url: https://github.com/jelmer/xandikos

then the following command would process each repository in turn:

shell
svp run --recipe=framwork.yaml --candidates=candidates.yaml

Monorepo Support

Silver-Platter supports creating multiple pull requests for different paths within a single repository (monorepos). This is useful when you want to apply changes to specific subdirectories and create separate pull requests for each.

To use monorepo support, specify the --paths option with comma-separated paths:

shell
svp run --mode=propose --paths=frontend,backend ./update-deps.sh https://github.com/org/monorepo

This will:

  1. Run the script in each specified subdirectory (frontend and backend)
  2. Create separate branches with path-specific suffixes (update-deps-frontend, update-deps-backend)
  3. Only include changes within each respective directory
  4. Create separate pull requests for each path

The script will be executed with the working directory set to each specified path, and only files within that path will be committed and included in the pull request.

Using Paths in Candidates

You can also specify paths directly in your candidates.yaml file for repositories that should be processed as monorepos:

yaml
--- - url: https://github.com/org/monorepo name: monorepo paths: - frontend - backend - docs - url: https://github.com/org/single-repo name: single-repo # No paths specified, will be processed normally

When a candidate has paths specified, silver-platter will automatically create separate pull requests for each path. The CLI --paths option will be ignored for candidates that have their own paths defined.

Batch Mode

Use batch mode when you're going to make a large number of changes and would
like to review or modify the diffs before sending them out:

shell
svp batch generate --recipe=framwork.yaml --candidates=candidates.yaml framwork

This will then create a directory called "framwork", with a file called
batch.yaml with all the pending changes:

yaml
name: framwork work: - url: https://github.com/dulwich/dulwich name: dulwich description: I spotted that we often mistype *framework* as *framwork*. commit-message: Fix a typo mode: propose - url: https://github.com/jelmer/xandikos name: dulwich description: I spotted that we often mistype *framework* as *framwork*. commit-message: Fix a typo mode: propose recipe: ../framwork.yaml

For each of the candidates, a clone with the changes is created. You can introspect
and modify the clones as appropriate.

After you review the changes, edit batch.yaml as you see fit - remove
entries that don't appear to be correct, edit the details for the merge
requests, etc.

Once you're happy, you can publish the results:

shell
svp batch publish framwork

This will publish all the changes, using the mode and parameters specified in
batch.yaml.

batch.yaml is automatically stripped of any entries in work that have fully
landed, i.e. where the pull request has been merged or where the changes were
pushed to the origin.

To check up on the status of your changes, run svp batch status:

shell
svp batch status framwork

And to refresh any merge proposals that may have become out of date,
run publish again:

shell
svp batch publish framwork

Supported hosters

At the moment, the following code hosters are supported:

Working with Debian packages

Several common operations for Debian packages have dedicated subcommands
under the debian-svp command. These will also automatically look up
packaging repository location for any Debian package names that are
specified.

  • upload-pending: Build and upload a package and push/propose the
    changelog updates.
  • run: Similar to svp run but specific to Debian packages:
    it ensures that the upstream and pristine-tar branches are available as
    well, can optionally update the changelog, and can test that the branch still
    builds.

Some Debian-specific example recipes are provided in examples/debian/:

  • lintian-fixes.yaml: Run the
    lintian-brush
    command to fix common issues reported by lintian.
  • new-upstream-release.yaml: Merge in a new upstream release.
  • multi-arch-hints.yaml: Apply multi-arch hints.
  • orphan.yaml: Mark a package as orphaned, update its Maintainer
    field and move it to the common Debian salsa group.
  • rules-requires-root.yaml: Mark a package as "Rules-Requires-Root: no"
  • cme.yaml: Run "cme fix dpkg", from the
    cme package.

debian-svp run takes package name arguments that will be resolved
to repository locations from the Vcs-Git field in the package.

See debian-svp COMMAND --help for more details.

Examples running debian-svp:

console
# Create merge proposal running lintian-brush against Samba debian-svp run --recipe=examples/lintian-brush.yaml samba # Upload pending changes for tdb debian-svp upload-pending tdb # Upload pending changes for any packages maintained by Jelmer, # querying vcswatch. debian-svp upload-pending --vcswatch --maintainer jelmer@debian.org # Import the latest upstream release for tdb, without testing # the build afterwards. debian-svp run --recipe=examples/debian/new-upstream-release.yaml \ --no-build-verify tdb # Apply multi-arch hints to tdb debian-svp run --recipe=examples/debian/multiarch-hints.yaml tdb

The following environment variables are provided for Debian packages:

  • DEB_SOURCE: the source package name
  • DEB_UPDATE_CHANGELOG: indicates whether a changelog entry should
    be added. Either "leave" (leave alone) or "update" (update changelog).

Credentials

The svp hosters subcommand can be used to display the hosting sites that
silver-platter is aware of:

shell
svp hosters

And to log into a new hosting site, simply run svp login BASE-URL, e.g.:

shell
svp login https://launchpad.net/

Command Reference

Main Commands

  • svp run - Run a codemod on one or more repositories
  • svp apply - Apply changes to a local checkout without publishing
  • svp forges - List known code hosting platforms
  • svp login - Authenticate with a hosting platform
  • svp proposals - List your merge proposals
  • svp batch generate - Generate batch changes for review
  • svp batch publish - Publish reviewed batch changes

Exit Codes

svp run will exit 0 if no changes have been made, 1 if at least one
repository has been changed and 2 in case of trouble.

Documentation

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see our Code of Conduct and
feel free to file issues or submit pull requests.

License

Silver-Platter is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.
See LICENSE for details.

Contributors

Showing top 6 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from jelmer/silver-platter via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/26/2026