Are Qubes Windows Tools reviewed by the Qubes OS Project team?

Sorry if this is a stupid question. I’m struggling to determine whether the “Qubes Windows Tools” count as Official, Community or something else.

It looks like they’re not on an community repo so… does that mean they’re official? Or at-least “officially trusted”?

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I hope this question is not politically driven.

I certainly hope its not too! I can tell you I have no conscious political agenda :thinking:. Honestly your reply has completely thrown me and got me questioning how it would or whether it should have been… :fearful:

They look like wonderful tools I just haven’t used any community templates thus far and want to know if using “Qubes Windows Tools” constitutes expanding my circle of trust much like using any template from the qubes-templates-community repo would. (As they’re not on that repo, its not super clear to me.)

I really didn’t intend my question to cause any controversy… I thought it was just a straightforward case of “what does this count as”.

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They likely have some stamp of approval, because (unless I am greatly mistaken) they’re actually documented on the Qubes-OS site proper. And I believe there’s someone on the development team who specifically supports it here when people have questions.

[Edit: I was wrong on both counts here–the “someone on the development team” I was thinking of isn’t listed as being on the development team but he does seem to be an “advocate” for windows integration with QubesOS. The other thing I said is corrected below.]

Indeed, in the official docs, the link to Windows manual redirects to Community docs. This might be misleading.

My guess would be that the Windows Tools are official, but the guide isn’t. Is this true @adw? Some history for those interested: Qubes Windows Tools are now open source! | Qubes OS.

Qubes Windows Tools are basically in “life-support mode” right now with respect to the core developers. That means that the core devs are still fixing regressions (like #7917) but not trying to fix all existing bugs and not actively developing any new features, which is why almost all QWT issues get the “help wanted” label by default.

However, thanks to tabit-pro’s integration work and Elliot Killick’s qvm-create-windows-qube, it’s now much easier for the core devs to test and accept QWT contributions from the community, so feature development is still welcome and encouraged among the community devs.

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Good point. They should probably be moved (back) to the official docs.

@GWeck, would you like to open a PR to perform this migration? It should just be a simple copy+paste of the windows/ directory from Qubes-Community/Conents/docs/os/ to qubes-doc/user/templates/. I could do it myself, but you’re the main one (AFAIK) who has been contributing to the community Windows docs, so it might make more sense for your name to be on the commits and PR. I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like I was trying to take credit for their work. :slightly_smiling_face:

The PR will then undergo the standard review process for all official doc contributions.

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Ah-ha, that clears things up. Thanks for the help everyone!

I am still trying to get a working copy - fighting with github, as usual. Hope tomorrow to create a PR.

What kinds of problems are you having? Anything I can do to help? If it’s too much trouble and you’d like me to open the PR instead, just let me know.

My main trouble was with providing the correct links that should work after entering the documentation into its new location. After some fighting, I was now able to get it working in my branch, so I created three pull requests that should work.

Could you check if I messed it up completely, or if I am moving in the right direction? There may still be a few (3 - 4 ???) links pointing at the wrong location, but this could be easily repaired if the rest is o.k.

I will remove the old texts from the external documentation location, if and when it is correct at the new place.

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I’ll take a look and comment on your PR. Thank you!