Re: Which how to for apt-get repository on CentOS?
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:
> Ignacio Valdes <ivaldes@hal-pc.org> writes:
>
>> Hi all, Building an apt-get repository on CentOS. There seems to be many
>> documents on apt-get repository building but they point to many
>> different commands like apparently deprecated dpkg-scanfiles, reprepro
>> and others. Which one is the correct one? -- IV
>
> I recommend starting with reprepro. The documentation isn't ideal and it
> can be confusing, but it does everything as opposed to requiring you to
> stitch together a bunch of separate commands and it's fully capable of
> anything you might need.
>
> There are some other, simpler ones tha I forget off-hand that might be
> better for smaller repositories (reprepro does have the problem of having
> a lot of reprepro make-angels-dance-on-pin sorts of commands where it's
> very inobvious when you want to ever run them), but I think reprepro is
> the current fully-functional standard for repository management software.
I concurr with that recommendation of reprepro. If you follow
/usr/share/doc/reprepro/short-howto.gz then you can be up and running in
a few minutes. Learning about all the features takes longer though. I
think reprepro is just the simplest all around for creating a
repository.
dpkg-scanpackages/sources can also be used but that only generated the
Packages/Sources files. It does not generate Release or Release.gpg
files or manage the debs or sources in any way. So to use that you need
a lot of extra scripts around it.
The official Debian archive uses apt-ftparchive but again you need
scripts around that for a fully functional repository.
Then there is also debpool and mini-dinstall. Both are targeted
specifically for small private repositories with minimal dependcies. The
full DAK Debian uses needs a postgresql database for example. Not these
tools (reprepro used libdb-4.8.so, not postgresql). But I believe both
debpool and mini-dinstall are limited by the archive size.
Another reason why I also recommend reprepro is that it can also mirror
(multiple) repositories and filter them. It is easy to set up reprepro
to mirror debian main, contrib and non-free and add an extra local
branch for packages you compile yourself. You can also snapshot your
repository, e.g. to make a release of what is currently there. Or query
what sources need building for some arch and run a buildd. Lots of nice
features that are easy to use and might come in handy in the future.
All with being small and easy to get started.
MfG
Goswin
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