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I made a local APT repository that automatically fetches DEBs and AppImages from anywhere

On Debian-based distros, when an app is available as a DEB or an AppImage (that doesn’t self-update), but no APT repository, PPA or Flatpak, the only option is to manually download each update, and usually manually check even whether there are updates.

But, what if those would be upgraded at the same time as everything else using the tools you’re familiar with ?

dynapt is a local web server that fetches those DEBs (and AppImages to be wrapped into DEBs) wherever those are, then serves these to APT like any package repository does.

I started building it a few months ago, and after using it to upgrade apps on my computers and servers for some time, I pre-released it for the first time last week.

The stable version will come with a CLI wizard to avoid this manual configuration.

Feedback is welcome :)

JubilantJaguar ,

Looks great, well done.

Personally, the deb-related annoyance that I have encountered most often in recent years is that there is an APT repo but I have to jump thru hoops to add it. An example is signal-desktop, where the handy one-click installation goes like this:


<span style="color:#323232;"># 1. Install our official public software signing key:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">wget -O- https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt/keys.asc | gpg --dearmor > signal-desktop-keyring.gpg
</span><span style="color:#323232;">cat signal-desktop-keyring.gpg | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"># 2. Add our repository to your list of repositories:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">echo 'deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main' |
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;"># 3. Update your package database and install Signal:
</span><span style="color:#323232;">sudo apt update && sudo apt install signal-desktop
</span>

Why does Debian-Ubuntu not provide a simple command for this? Yes there is add-apt-repository but for some reason it doesn’t deal with keys. I’ve had to deal with this PITA on multiple occasions, what’s up with this?

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

Thanks, and agreed !

Fortunately, copy/pasting works and you only have to do it once.

semperverus ,
@semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

Obtainium but for Debian, nice

timewarp ,
@timewarp@lemmy.world avatar

Such a security risk though, but still better than curling scripts into sudo

semperverus ,
@semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

I’d say going directly to a developer’s github page for packages isnt too bad, especially now with all of the security features github has in the background, but yea technically true.

marmalade ,

I mean they could add a diff thing, like how AUR helpers do it. It’s not much, but it’s something.

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

Thanks !

bizdelnick , (edited )

If I’d decide to implement something like this, I’d consider two options: local repo with file:// scheme or custom apt-transport. HTTP server is needless here. (But I’ll never do this because I prefer to rebuild packages myself if there’s no repo for my distro.)

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

local repo with file:// scheme

With that, I couldn’t trigger a download when apt update is ran, I could only do a cron, i.e. a delay, that I do not want.

custom apt-transport

I thought about that, but found no documentation on how to do it. If you have any, I’m interested.

Even just finding documentation on how to generate DEBs and APT repository metadata files was very hard.

bizdelnick ,

It is documented in libapt-pkg-doc (/usr/share/doc/libapt-pkg-doc/method.html/index.html).

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

In an APT package OMG 😂

I found an online version though, which I would never have found through my search engine (and on a site that doesn’t even support HTTPS) 😅

Looks like difficult reading too 😭

Thanks anyway.

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

Yeah, I don’t have the skill for this. I’d be very happy if someone else would make this, but if not then I’m sticking to HTTP.

Shdwdrgn ,

Sorry to ask, but isn’t this basically the same thing as apt-cacher-ng?

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

Sorry to ask

Don’t be. I would love to know that an existing and more experienced program does what mine does.

I’ve been looking for it myself for a long time before deciding to build it.

isn’t this basically the same thing as apt-cacher-ng?

Here’s what I’m reading :

Apt-Cache-ng is A caching proxy. Specialized for package files from Linux distributors, primarily for Debian (and Debian based) distributions but not limited to those.

A caching proxy have the following benefits:

  • Lower latency
  • Reduce WAN traffic
  • Higher speed for cached contents

<span style="color:#323232;">+------------+         +------------+        +------------+
</span><span style="color:#323232;">| Apt Client |  <------+ Apt Cache  | <------+ Apt Mirror |
</span><span style="color:#323232;">+------------+         +------------+        +------------+
</span>

So, not the same thing.

It locally mirrors existing repositories containing existing packages, it doesn’t locally create a new repository for new packages from standalone DEBs.

Shdwdrgn ,

OK yeah, I wasn’t sure if it had a way to collect debs from other sources. I’ve been using it for years to locally cache the standard Debian repos so I don’t need to re-download packages every time I update my various servers and VMs, but I haven’t really tried using it for anything beyond that.

Telorand ,

I like it. Wonder if this could be retooled to work on rpm-ostree systems, because any layered packages installed from RPM files have the same limitation of needing to be manually upgraded.

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

I don’t know anything about RPMs, but if you or anyone is familiar with it then perhaps !

barkingspiders ,

Neat! Thanks for sharing!

KaKi87 OP ,
@KaKi87@jlai.lu avatar

Thank you for your appreciation !

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