Lone Wolves

If you are writing software for Debian GNU/Linux or deratives like Ubuntu then setting up an APT repository is a very useful thing to do. It's often not possible to get your software into the official repositories of already released distributions. Setting up an APT repository for your users makes it very easy for them to keep up-to-date with the latest version of your software, far easier than providing .deb's as downloads on your website.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to set up and manage an APT repository using reprepro. Reprepro makes it very easy to set up APT repositories that use a common /pool directory to store all the package files. Using a /pool directory means that you don't have to duplicate packages (especially source packages) across different distributions and versions. In this regard, reprepro is superior to APT tools such as apt-ftparchive. I am going to assume that you are already familliar with the basic workings of an APT repository.

Setting up reprepro

The distributions file

If you want to provide APT repositories for multiple distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, etcetera) then you should manage them separately. I am going to keep all my repositories under /var/packages/ and set up a repository for Ubuntu Dapper Drake. The directory /var/packages/ubuntu/ is going to be the base of the Ubuntu repository. Create a conf/ in the repository base to hold all the configuration files for this repository. The distributions file contains the information that reprepro needs to manage your repository. My configurations looks like this:

The above example contains one block of settings, but you can have multiple blocks separated by a newline in this configuration file. You would have, for example, one block for Ubuntu Dapper Drake, one for Edgy Eft, one for Breezy Badger, etcetera. The Origin, Label and Description field can be filled with whatever you want. The Codename is the specific distribution/version that this block of settings applies to. In this case it's dapper. The Architectures and Components fields speak for themselves. The SignWith fields indicates that you want to create a Release.gpg file, creating a signed APT repository. It is highly recommended that you do so. If you have multiple GPG keys installed on your APT server, you can also replace the "yes" value with something that tells GPG what key to use. A name or a key ID for example. Finally the DebOverride and DscOverride fields tell reprepro what files to use for the override rules. Override rules can be used to override .deb and .dsc configuration fields. The .dsc files always need an override file because .dsc files do not contain Section and Priority information, e.g. optional - games for gnome-hearts.

The options file

The options file is a list of command line options that you want to pass to reprepro everytime you run it. Creating an options file saves you many keystrokes when managing your APT repository. You can only put the long option names in it (e.g. verbose, not v) without the -- prefix. My options file looks like this:

If you set the SignWith configuration field to use a GPG key that requires a password then you should set the ask-passphrase option in your options file or set up a GPG-agent to do the signing for you. By default reprepro will not ask you for your passphrase.

The override file

The default location for override files is the override/ directory in the APT base directory. The override file has a very simple layout of "package_name option value". For example, the entry for gnome-hearts looks like this:

Managing your repository

The configuration of reprepro is now done, so it is time to add at least one package to it so that reprepro will generate all the required files and directories for you. You should always work from the base repository directory or specify the path to the base directory with the --basedir option (commandline options override options specified in the options file). Adding a .deb is very easy:

Or, for gnome-hearts:

You can include .dsc, .udeb and .changes files with the commands includedsc, includeudeb and include respectively. The list command shows you what packages reside in the repository, and you can remove packages again with the remove command:

Setting up Apache

Now that the repository has been created it's time to let the world access it. At my registrar I have set up the packages.jejik.com subdomain to point to the IP address of my APT server. I am going to create a virtual host that points to the /var/packages/ directory and, at the same time, hides the conf/ and db/ directory. The db/ directory is created by reprepro when you add your first package. The result is that people will be able to add lines such as the folowing to their /etc/apt/sources.list file:

Here is what the Apache configuration file looks like:

After this, it's a matter of restarting Apache and you should be able to access your repository from apt. Reprepro has many more functions than I have explained in this article. For example, you can use it to synchrionise with other APT repositories as well. Personally I don't have a need for that so I have not explored these features. I use my own APT repository primarily for distributions where my software cannot be added to the official repositories anymore. However, this article should give you more than enough information to manage your own repository for the software you write and/or package.