Techaro Debian/Ubuntu/Red Hat repo preview

[Xe]

Hi all,

After spending a while off and on over the last few weeks attempting to do this, I have succeeded at creating a proof of concept apt/rpm repo for Techaro packages. If you want to test this, please do the following:

1. Install the package repo definitions for your distribution
2. Attempt to install anubis or yeet
3. Check if the packages work (you can get anubis --help or yeet --help output)

If you are using a Debian-like distro, use techaro-repo-unstable_1.0.1_all.deb.

If you are using a Red Hat or another RPM based distro, use techaro-repo-unstable-1.0.1-1.noarch.rpm.

These repos should work on all supported versions of Ubuntu, Red Hat, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux. Oracle Linux, Debian, and other distributions.

Please let me know how this works for you.

This is the unstable repo. This will include release candidates and other prerelease versions of software.

RPM packages may not byte for byte match the existing release artifacts due to this publication process using a different flow that signed the packages with the package signing key.

What do you think? Would you like to see this productionalized in the future?

Have a good day,

Xe

[benharri]

Seems to be installed correctly on debian 12, thanks for this!

[zaggynl]

Thanks for the effort in adding an official repository!
How does one add the repo definitions?

[lotharsm]

I can only comment about Debian, I am not a RedHat user.

• Download [techaro-repo-unstable_1.0.1_all.deb](https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable/pool/main/t/techaro-repo-unstable/techaro-repo-unstable_1.0.1_all.deb) first
• Install with (sudo) apt install ./techaro-repo-unstable_1.0.1_all.deb
• This will place the repo configuration in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/techaro-unstable.list
• Update your package list with (sudo) apt update

Then you should be able to install and update it through the repository itself like any other package.

Right now, I can't fully test it because the only Debian machine I have ready is on my Raspberry Pi and there seem to be no matching packages on the server:

N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-armhf/Packages' as repository 'https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'armhf'

[zaggynl]

Thanks, I need to have my eyes checked, I did not notice the package itself is named repo!

[rimas-kudelis]

Hi Xe,
having a repo where the latest build can be pulled from is really nice. I would like a stable repo in addition to the unstable one though. Also, you can't just set the repo up and forget it, you should actually upload your latest builds there to make them available.
I've configured the repo today, but it feels like it might end up being pretty useless since the latest build available from it is 1.19.1 at the time of writing, whereas GitHub offers 1.21.3 already:

$ apt policy anubis
anubis:
  Installed: 1.21.3
  Candidate: 1.21.3
  Version table:
 *** 1.21.3 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.19.1 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages
     1.19.0 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages
     1.19.0~pre1 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages
     1.18.0 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages
     1.17.1 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages
     1.16.0 500
        500 https://pkgs.techaro.lol/deb/unstable stable/main amd64 Packages

[Xe]

Sorry about that! My analytics were showing that this repo wasn't being used and I haven't had any of my customers ask for an apt repo, so I cut scope in order to iterate faster. I will backfill this and set up processes to automate this.

[rimas-kudelis]

Hi Xe, and thanks for your swift reply!
I will definitely appreciate an up-to-date repo! ❤️

As for the reasons why it isn't being used, I think a likely one is that the information about it is hidden in this Conversation and the repo itself is introduced as something more akin to an experiment than an actually supported way to get the package. 😄
It is much easier for a server admin to keep the package up to date if it gets updated automatically along with all other packages. Unless you're going to make changes that would break existing configurations and require manual intervention, that is (if you do, probably the right thing would be to rename the next-gen package to anubis2 or something).

Another likely reason is that you introduced the repo as hosting unstable builds. I think it's more important to have one dedicated to stable releases only, because admins like me, who want to just install and forget, would obviously prefer the installed service to work reliably. Meanwhile, if someone wants unstable builds for testing and whatnot, they're probably willing to invest more time into updating and testing them out anyway, in which case they probably wouldn't mind spending a couple extra minutes to download the deb from GitHub.

[zaggynl]

Stupid question: does everyone update manually by downloading the deb from github now?
Or is there a workflow to frequently check for a latest release and then download/install?

+1 for an official repo with howto visible in github readme/wiki

[samip5]

I think apt-dater will handle that burden? :)