aarg - Another APT Repository Generator

Aggregates Debian packages from multiple sources into signed APT repositories.

Features

• Sources: GitHub releases, OpenBuildService (OBS) and existing APT repositories
• Signature verification of InRelease and .changes files against configured keys, GitHub releases without .changes are checked against GitHub's asset digests
• Per-feed filters for distributions (with renaming), release types, tags, release assets, source and package names
• Retention policies to keep only the newest versions per version pattern
• Optional debug and source packages
• Pool modes: standard hierarchical pool, or redirect mode where only the repository metadata is hosted and pool requests are redirected to the original feed URLs
• Optional web page per repository with Markdown description, package overview and install script
• Publishing to Cloudflare Pages, or serving locally
• Each step (fetch, generate, publish) runs on its own and can be combined with other tools

Installation

Using go install

go install github.com/dionysius/aarg@latest

Quick Start

Create Configuration

Create a main configuration file and repository configuration file(s), refer to examples which contain detailed comments for various options.

Build Repository

# Complete build: fetch packages, generate repo, publish
aarg build --all

# Or run steps individually:
aarg fetch --all      # Download packages
aarg generate --all   # Generate APT metadata

# Serve or publish result
aarg serve            # Serve locally
aarg publish          # Upload to provider

Structure and Pipeline

Directories can also be customized in the config file.

/configured/root/
├── downloads/              # Packages downloaded by `fetch`
├── trusted/                # Verified packages, hardlinked from downloads by `fetch`
├── cache/                  # Parsed package data, reused by `fetch` and `generate`
├── staging/
│   └── <timestamp>/        # One build per `generate` run, the last ones are kept
└── public -> staging/<timestamp>/
    ├── myrepo1/...         # Standard repository structure inside
    ├── ...
    ├── keys/               # Public signing key
    ├── 404.html
    └── index.html          # With compose `web`

serve serves the public directory and publish uploads it to the configured provider.

TODO's

Besides cleanup, better interfacing and testing:

• Remove staging and instead cleanup public directory after generation so it doesn't need to be symlinked anymore
• Internal server should also understand redirect metadata and offer redirects
• Add more potential sources and providers
• Offer package webpage describing metadata of each package, extract man pages, licenses, etc. The usual package description page from your known distribution.
• Make web template generation customizable
• Generated install script is too opinionated by using the OS' codename as suite in the sources configuration
• When using build, do publish only if changes are detected (or enforce with flag)
• And many things I just forgot