Pyaptly

Automates the creation and managment of aptly mirrors and snapshots based on toml input files.

Important: Currently under heavy development:

• For for the old version switch to the master branch
• Main branch builds contain alpha packages, see Artifacts

Why & How

Aptly is great tool for creating Debian repositories. But as soon as it's required to maintain repositories for different environments it gets very complicated fast.

This is where Pyaptly comes in. First of all, a single config.toml can be used to define mirrors, snapshots and publishes instead of using command line arguments. The definition includes exactly how the entities are created and updated.

Secondly, aptly isn't really layed out to have retention policies. Updating a snapshot will lose the information of the previous state. That means it's hard to roll back to a previous state if required. This problem is fixed by using fix timestamps in snapshot names. That behaviour also allows to define a fixed update spacing. It's possible to say for example "only update this snapshot once a week".

Example commands

Initialize a new aptly server.

pyaptly mirror mirrors.toml create
pyaptly mirror mirrors.toml update
pyaptly snapshot mirrors.toml create
pyaptly publish mirrors.toml create

Update mirrors and snapshots and switch publish endpoints with automatic-update: true to the new snapshots.

pyaptly mirror mirrors.toml update
pyaptly snapshot mirrors.toml create
pyaptly publish mirrors.toml create
pyaptly publish mirrors.toml update

Manually trigger a switch to the new snapshots for the publish endpoint ubuntu/stable.

pyaptly publish mirrors.toml update -n ubuntu/stable

Debugging

The most interesting mode for users is not --debug but --info which shows all commands executed.

> pyaptly legacy -- --info --config pyaptly/tests/repo.toml repo create
Command call
  cmd:         gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring trustedkeys.gpg --list-keys --with-colons -> 0
  stdout:     'tru::1:1709575833:0:3:1:5
               pub:-:255:22:2841988729C7F3FF:1701882080:::-:::scESC:::::ed25519:::0:
               fpr:::::::::6380C07FF6496016E01CF4522841988729C7F3FF:
               uid:-::::1701882080::5BBE9C7E7AA5EEE3538F66274125D69FA727FD1E::Pyaptly Test 01 <[email protected]>::::::::::0:
               sub:-:255:18:0A1CBEF26FE4F36E:1701882080::::::e:::::cv25519::
               fpr:::::::::9EE64E40A5E3530D3E18A97C0A1CBEF26FE4F36E:
               pub:-:255:22:EC54D33E5B5EBE98:1701882297:::-:::scESC:::::ed25519:::0:
               fpr:::::::::660D45228AB6B59CCE48AFB3EC54D33E5B5EBE98:
               uid:-::::1701882297::F3EF71B78669C0FC259A4078151BDC5815A6015D::Pyaptly Test 02 <[email protected]>::::::::::0:
               sub:-:255:18:042FE0F5BB743B60:1701882297::::::e:::::cv25519::
               fpr:::::::::AE58B62134E02AF8E5D55FF4042FE0F5BB743B60:'
Command call
  cmd:         aptly repo list -raw -> 0
  stderr:     'Config file not found, creating default config at /root/.aptly.conf'
Command call
  cmd:         aptly mirror list -raw -> 0
Command call
  cmd:         aptly snapshot list -raw -> 0
Command call
  cmd:         aptly publish list -raw -> 0
Command call
  cmd:         aptly repo -architectures=amd64,i386 -distribution=stable -component=main create centrify -> 0
  stdout:     'Local repo [centrify] successfully added.
               You can run 'aptly repo add centrify ...' to add packages to repository.'

Commands that fail are always displayed in red on a tty, but that actually only happens if something is broken.