Packaging using a local repository

This guide walks you through the steps necessary to tell solbuild how to use your locally built .eopkg files that are not yet in the Solus repository.

note

It is not necessary to use a local repository to test most package submissions. The easier and recommended way is to install the .eopkg files created when a package is built. This procedure is intended for use with stack upgrades, rebuilds, or new packages that need new dependencies that are not yet in the repository.

We assume you have worked through the packaging material for creating a package with solbuild.

Install the local profile

sudo eopkg install solbuild-config-local-unstable

You will also need to ensure that your repository is fully up to date. See Update Your Development Environment

Using the local repository

The local repository index and any local eopkg files are stored in /var/lib/solbuild/local/

Copying .eopkg files to the local repository

To use your locally built .eopkg package files as dependencies for another package, you must copy the regular package files, and any accompanying -devel package files to the /var/lib/solbuild/local local repository directory.

For example, building the package libcmis produces the packages libcmis and libcmis-devel. Both should be copied to the local repository to build other packages against libcmis.

To copy all .eopkg files within a directory to the local repository, use the following command:

sudo cp -v *.eopkg /var/lib/solbuild/local

Listing locally built eopkg files

Use this to list all index and eopkg files in the local repository:

go-task list-local

Using the local repository to build a package

With the .eopkg files now present in the local repository, you can use them to build a package by running go-task build-local, rather than just go-task, and solbuild will prefer your packages over packages found in the Solus repository.

Every time you run go-task build-local, all .eopkg files in the local repository will be re-indexed.

A streamlined local repository workflow for stack updates

If you know ahead of time that you are going to need to put the package files from the current build into the local repository as dependencies for subsequent builds, you can use:

go-task build-localcp

The build-localcp task will:

• Build the current package against any existing packages in your local repository.
• Copy the newly built package files to your local repository.
• Re-index your local repository.

The build-localcp workflow can be very convenient when you are doing stack updates.

Best practices when working with a solbuild local repository

There are some important things to know when working with local repositories, as they may lead to issues later on.

• solbuild will use your version of a package from the local repository regardless of whether there's a higher release in the Solus repository. Therefore:
  • Only use the build-local or build-localcp tasks when required.
  • Old packages in the local repository can be removed with the clean-local task:

    go-task clean-local
    Note that the clean-local task will automatically re-index the (now empty) local repository.
  • If a package is already installed in the solbuild image, the release number of the updated version must be higher for it to be installed and used as a dependency at build time.

Installing packages from the local repository index

eopkg supports resolving packages from more than one repository. This can be used to configure eopkg to prefer installing local repository packages over packages from the Solus repository.

This requires an existing local repository index. If you have used the command go-task build-local, then an index was created automatically. Otherwise, you must create one.

Creating or updating the local repository index

To generate or refresh the eopkg index in /var/lib/solbuild/local, use the following command:

go-task build-localindex

Or, if you have our helper functions set up, you get the same result by running:

localrepo_reindex

Keep in mind that the index needs to be refreshed whenever you add or remove locally built packages to your local repository. Otherwise, eopkg won't know that new packages are available or have been removed from the local repository.

Package resolution priority in eopkg

eopkg will always prefer packages from the topmost repository listed with eopkg lr.

In other words, if a package exists both in the local repository and the Solus repository, eopkg will only consider the package from the first repository listed with eopkg lr regardless of its release number.

Adding the local repository index to the eopkg repository database

The easiest way to add the local repository index to the list of repositories known to eopkg, in the correct order, is to add the local repository and then re-add the official Solus repository:

1. First, let's list the repositories currently known to eopkg with eopkg lr. This should produce output similar to:

Solus [active]
   https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz

2. Now the repositories need to be added to account for the desired dependency resolution order:

sudo eopkg ar Local /var/lib/solbuild/local/eopkg-index.xml.xz
sudo eopkg ar Solus https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz

This should yield output similar to:

$ sudo eopkg ar Local /var/lib/solbuild/local/eopkg-index.xml.xz
Repo Local added to system.
Updating repository: Local
Package database updated.
$ sudo eopkg ar Solus https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz
Repo already present with name Solus and same URL. Removing first.
Repo Solus added to system.
Updating repository: Solus
eopkg-index.xml.xz.sha1sum     (40.0  B)100%    765.61 KB/s [00:00:00] [complete]
eopkg-index.xml.xz             (2.1 MB)100%    914.38 KB/s [00:00:01] [complete]
Package database updated.

3. Check that the dependency resolution order is correct so that packages from the local solbuild repository are preferred over the upstream Solus repository.

eopkg lr should yield output similar to:

$ eopkg lr
Local [active]
   /var/lib/solbuild/local/eopkg-index.xml.xz
Solus [active]
   https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz

Disabling the local solbuild repository in eopkg

To reset the system to use only packages from the official Solus repository, disable the "Local" eopkg repository using the command sudo eopkg disable-repo Local.

The output should look similar to:

$ sudo eopkg disable-repo Local
$ sudo eopkg lr
Local [inactive]
   /var/lib/solbuild/local/eopkg-index.xml.xz
Solus [active]
   https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz

The "Local" eopkg repository can be re-enabled with sudo eopkg enable-repo Local.

$ sudo eopkg enable-repo Local
$ sudo eopkg lr
Local [active]
   /var/lib/solbuild/local/eopkg-index.xml.xz
Solus [active]
   https://cdn.getsol.us/repo/unstable/eopkg-index.xml.xz

Closing thoughts

Congratulations on making it this far! Your system should now be ready for convenient deployment and testing of locally built packages.