aptly 0.5

Local Repository Publishing

Local repositories could be used in two ways:

• test new versions of software
• provide stable distribution of new versions

For the second case, it is best to create snapshots of local repositories and publish them. However, when testing out new versions, there isn't much sense in creating snapshot each time repository is updated. So aptly since version 0.5 supports direct publishing of repositories. Moreover, when local repository is updated, published repository could be updated as well in one step.

When local repository is created, default publishing options (distribution and component) could be specified, so that these options don't need to be specified when publishing:

aptly repo create -distribution=wheezy testing-wheezy
aptly repo add -remove-files testing-wheezy incoming/*.deb
aptly publish repo testing-wheezy
...
aptly repo add -remove-files testing-wheezy incoming/*.deb
aptly publish update wheezy

Published Snapshot Switching

Snapshot is a way to make package environment stable and repeatable, but from time to time new snapshots are created that contain new versions of software. To publish new version of snapshot, aptly before 0.5 required old snapshot to be unpublished and new snapshot to be published again. During this process, repository would be unusable.

New feature allows to "switch" snapshots in published repository. aptly would do its best to minimize repository downtime:

• first, new packages files are linked to published root
• new metadata files (Packages, Release, ...) are created in temporary locations
• new versions of metadata files are moved to final locations
• old package files are cleaned up from the pool (if required).

For example:

aptly snapshot create wheezy-7.3 from mirror wheezy-main
aptly publish snapshot wheezy-7.3
....
aptly mirror update wheezy-main
aptly snapshot create wheezy-7.4 from mirror wheezy-main
aptly publish switch wheezy wheezy-7.4

Merge Strategy

When merging snapshots aptly would override packages with the version from the latest argument on the command line. This works ok if you merge, for example regular repository and backports. But sometimes this is not enough, e.g. when merging regular repository, updates and security repository. aptly now supports flag -latest to change merge strategy to "latest version wins":

aptly snapshot merge -latest wheezy-latest wheezy-backports wheezy-main wheezy-security

Thanks to Ryan Uber and Keith Chambers for the idea and pull request.

Scripting

Sometimes you need to perform bunch of actions with mirrors, snapshots or repositories. aptly 0.5 supports special "raw" listing which is easily parseable. E.g. update all Debian mirrors:

aptly mirror list -raw | grep -E '^debian-.*' | xargs -n 1 aptly mirror update

Thanks to Eric Keller for the idea.

All Changes

Full list of changes in 0.5:

• Debian packages for aptly are available
• internal DB is compacted when calling aptly db cleanup (#19)
• size is shown in human-readable format (#18)
• fixed wrong location of man page in Debian package (#22)
• new flags: -distribution and -component to specify default publishing options in aptly repo create (#12)
• aptly would try harder to figure out distribution & component automatically when publishing going through the tree of snapshots, mirrors and local repositories
• aptly supports publishing local repositories, without intermediate snapshot step (#10)
• new command: aptly publish repo to publish local repository directly (#10)
• new command: aptly publish edit to change defaults for the local repository (#12)
• aptly supports global & command flags placement in any position in command line (before command name, after command name) (#17)
• new command: aptly db recover to recover internal DB after crash (#25)
• new flag: -raw to display list in machine-readable format for commands aptly mirror list, aptly repo list, aptly snapshot list and aptly publish list (#27, #31)
• new flags: -origin and -label to customize fields Origin: and Label: in Release files during publishing in commands aptly publish snapshot and aptly publish repo (#29)
• bug fix: with some HTTP servers aptly might have given "size mismatch" errors due to unnecessary decompression (#33)
• new command: aptly publish update updates published repo in-place (#8)
• new command: aptly publish switch switches published snapshot in-place (#8)
• new flag: -latest for command aptly snapshot merge changes merge strategy to "latest version wins" (#42), thanks to @ryanuber and @keithchambers