Hi Polarian,

Thanks for the quick response, and yes, I am looking to host binaries that pacman can pull. I'm interested in learning what pacman expects when it comes to file layout -- i.e the developer or reference documentation.

Thanks for the pointers -- downloaded the community.db from Archlinux, and am busy poking it now. I'll also checkout your mirror. ---

On the wiki pages -- happy to know I'm not just horribly stupid, I am very surprised honestly, as I've found Archlinux's wiki pages impeccable when it comes to information about the distro in the past.

Kind Regards, Paul Stemmet

On 31/12/2022 22:37, Polarian wrote:

Hello,

Can I please clarify what you are asking.

So you would like to host a repo to distribute binaries in which pacman can pull?

If so you can check the format of a mirror such as mine:

https://archmirror.polarian.dev

I do not remember the documentation page but from my memory in /etc/pacman.conf at the bottom you see the list of repositories, you can add your own:

[repo name] Server = http(s)://url.tld/

All you got to do is serve binaries using a web server such as pacman. You will need a package list, this I am not too sure about, what I know about it is it is a .tar.gz named as <reponame>.db but is not actually a database (inspected using the file command utility).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman

Might be useful to check the link above, but I am not sure it is here. I remember finding this referenced in a few of the arch wiki pages, but I am sorry I can't remember which they were (I have read a lot of the arch wiki pages).

I will take a look and hopefully reply to this later on with a better reply (if someone else doesn't get there before me).

Hope this helps in some way, Polarian

I generally have used instructions from here in the past to create repositories using repo-add which has seems to be worked fine.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Custom_local_reposit...

An example is here: https://github.com/sutarwadi/arch-hpcstack/blob/75c1db47995d6df4748cd2308144...

This seemed to have been enough to generate everything needed to create a signed repo.

On Sun, 1 Jan 2023, 00:09 Polarian, polarian@polarian.dev wrote:

Hello,

For anyone else who is on this mailing list, do you know if an Arch Wiki page exists on this topic, if so could you link it here.

I have checked the DeveloperWiki as well and I can't see any documentation on this, only how to build for official repository, but not explaining the layout.

I guess the best option you got so far is to just reverse engineer the repositories unless someone else knows the location of an ArchWiki page covering this topic.

Good luck, Polarian

Hi Jayesh,

Thanks for that link! I knew it had to be somewhere.

Kind Regards, Paul Stemmet

On 31/12/2022 23:36, Jayesh Badwaik wrote:

I generally have used instructions from here in the past to create repositories using repo-add which has seems to be worked fine.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks#Custom_local_reposit...

An example is here: https://github.com/sutarwadi/arch-hpcstack/blob/75c1db47995d6df4748cd2308144...

This seemed to have been enough to generate everything needed to create a signed repo.

On Sun, 1 Jan 2023, 00:09 Polarian, polarian@polarian.dev wrote:

Hello,

For anyone else who is on this mailing list, do you know if an
Arch Wiki
page exists on this topic, if so could you link it here.

I have checked the DeveloperWiki as well and I can't see any
documentation on this, only how to build for official repository, but
not explaining the layout.

I guess the best option you got so far is to just reverse engineer
the
repositories unless someone else knows the location of an ArchWiki
page
covering this topic.

Good luck,
Polarian

Hi Polarian,

Yes, I'd be happy to take what I learn and add it as a dedicated page, geared towards the "How to host a third party Archlinux package repo" usecase.

I'll be likely exploring this a bunch in the new year, as I plan on splitting up the AUR ceph package into proper libs for the v18 release later in 2023, and the best way to learn is to teach someone else.

Kind Regards, Paul Stemmet

On 01/01/2023 00:48, Polarian wrote:

Hey Paul,

Interested in expanding this to its own dedicated Arch Wiki page?

Thanks, Polarian

Hello,

It is in a subsection of another arch wiki page, thus can and should be expanded on if the demand is there.

If me and Paul want to expand it I do not see why not? It could be beneficial for others who want to distribute their arch binaries in their own custom repo.

Polarian

Happy new year you too,

Maybe it is time to dedicate a Arch Wiki page to hosting your own repositories to allow more people to be able to host and maintain their own mirrors. If arch linux truly cares about decentralisation, this should be a priority to allow more people to contribute, obviously you would need to inspect and trust a specific repository based on their maintainer reputation (and obviously don't use them if they do not open source their pkgbuilds).

We should be able to freely manage our own repositories, its sad that there is not more dedication to allowing self hosting of your own repositories.

Thanks for the help, Polarian

Hello,

I am aware of this, my recommendation was to add a dedicated page on HOW TO do this, so that it is easier for more people to setup their own repositories to host Arch Packages.

Currently there is only a small section within the pacman FAQ explaining how to do it, it would be a lot more useful if it was explained in more depth.

Thanks, Polarian