Hello Arch-DevOps Community

 

We'd like to ask you, if there's a possibilty to clone all core & extra packages from the ArchLinux GitLab Packages Group to one of our build-servers and build them for our self.

 

I've found the pkgctl utility, but when trying to execute 'pkgctl repo clone --protocol https --universe', it creates the respective directories but is then stuck at the cloning-process.

 

The reason for this request is: We're running 60+ Arch clients for our employees (tendency increasing), which all are managed through a central application, where we can execute OS-updates, software-installs, firmware-updates, etc.

 

The main problem is, that if we execute a company-wide update, some people directly install them and some postpone them as far as possible, sometimes taking vacation without installing the updates first.

 

This leads us to the problem that the clients don't have the same state, sometimes with a 2 week or more gap, which makes it difficult for us to troubleshoot any problems.

 

We had in mind, cloning all package-sources and then making snapshots of the build-directory, for a "stable" release.

When using the gitlab-api to get all the urls of the repos, after some time the request times out, because we made to many requests.

 

We do understand, that it's not the idea of Arch Linux to be a "part-stable" distribution, since of it's rolling-release model, but for maintenance-reasons it's the best option, having a rolling-release distro with up-to-date software and the ability to control, which packages are getting installed and which not.

 

I hope you understand our proposal.

-- 
Best regards

Pascal Bryner
Junior System Administrator