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The base URL

It is the URL that is used as base to build the URLs to download all the files from the external repository. It must be in a format so that the following gives the URLs of the manifest file and the package definition files:

${REPO_URL}/manifest
${REPO_URL}/packages/${APP}

The URL can point to any HTTP(S) server, as long as the URLs above correctly provide the desired files. Ideally, to prevent unnecessary traffic and slow repository updates, the server should support the Last-Modified/If-Modified-Since HTTP headers.

As an example, the base URL of an external repository hosted in a GitHub repository would be:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<user-organization>/<repository>/<branch>

The manifest file

This is the most important file in an external repository, since without it nothing else would work. Its first line must always contain the base URL of the repository. The following lines must contain the names of the package definition files present in the packages path, one per line, ideally sorted and without repetition. They can also be commented (starting with #), in which case the package definition file is considered deprecated. No file declared in the manifest should be missing, or else the caching mechanism will break.

The package definition files

A package definition file is a bash script whose purpose is to define the required information about a package. Since it is not meant to be executed by itself, but rather sourced by deb-get, it does not need to have the bash shebang or be set as executable. It also does not have the .sh extension.

Create a package definition file named <the-package-name> in the packages path in the repository, where <the-package-name> must be exactly the Package: name shown using apt show. Then add <the-package-name> to the manifest file.

The variables defined in the package definition file are the following:

  • DEFVER: An integer greater than or equal to 1 that represents the version of the package definition. It must be incremented every time ASC_KEY_URL, GPG_KEY_URL, APT_REPO_URL, APT_REPO_OPTIONS or PPA are added, changed or removed, or the package installation method changes.
  • ARCHS_SUPPORTED: A space-separated list of supported architectures, following the format used by dpkg --print-architecture.
  • CODENAMES_SUPPORTED: A space-separated list of supported upstream codenames, supporting the values from UPSTREAM_CODENAME.
  • ASC_KEY_URL: A URL to the ASCII-armored keyring file.
  • GPG_KEY_URL: A URL to the binary keyring file.
  • GPG_KEY_ID: The Key ID to be fetched from a keyserver.
  • APT_LIST_NAME: The name of the *.list file, without the extension.
  • APT_REPO_URL: The repository URL, the distribution codename and any following components for the line that will be printed to the *.list file.
  • APT_REPO_OPTIONS: The space-separated extra options, such as arch= or by-hash= for the line that will be printed to the *.list file.
  • PPA: The PPA address, following the format used by apt-add-repository, including the ppa: prefix.
  • URL: The URL to the *.deb file that will be downloaded. The name of the file must be the last thing at the end of it.
  • VERSION_PUBLISHED: The version of the package.
  • EULA: An End User License Agreement message for packages that have them.
  • PRETTY_NAME: The brand name of the software.
  • WEBSITE: A URL to the official website for the software.
  • SUMMARY: A brief description of what the software is and does.

ARCHS_SUPPORTED, CODENAMES_SUPPORTED, APT_LIST_NAME, APT_REPO_OPTIONS and EULA are optional and can be ommited when not needed. ARCHS_SUPPORTED defaults to amd64, and APT_LIST_NAME defaults to ${APP}. The URLs must use the HTTPS protocol whenever possible (i.e. except when using HTTPS would not work). To ensure the optimal performance of the commands prettylist and csvlist, if more complex operations (such as curl, unroll_url or grep over the GitHub releases JSON file) are needed to define the variables (most likely URL and VERSION_PUBLISHED), they (and the variables that depend on them) must be wrapped by the following condition:

if [ "${ACTION}" != prettylist ]; then
    # Code goes here
fi

APT_REPO_URL, PPA, PRETTY_NAME, WEBSITE, SUMMARY and the calls to get_github_releases or get_website must never be wrapped by the condition above.

The environment variables available to the package definition file are the following:

  • CACHE_DIR: The path to deb-get cache, /var/cache/deb-get.
  • HOST_CPU: The CPU architecture of the host system, as output by uname -m. Supported values are aarch64, armv7l and x86_64.
  • HOST_ARCH: The CPU architecture of the host system, as output by dpkg --print-architecture.
  • OS_ID: The id of the OS, as output by lsb_release --id --short. Supported values are Debian, Linuxmint, Neon, Pop, Ubuntu and Zorin.
  • OS_ID_PRETTY: The brand name of the OS.
  • OS_CODENAME: The codename of the OS, as output by lsb_release --codename --short.
  • UPSTREAM_ID: The id of the upstream distribution. Supported values are ubuntu and debian.
  • UPSTREAM_CODENAME: The codename of the upstream distribution. Supported values are buster (10), bullseye (11), bookworm (12), trixie (13), sid (unstable), focal (20.04), jammy (22.04), lunar (23.04), mantic (23.10) and noble (24.04)
  • UPSTREAM_RELEASE: The release version of the upstream distribution.
  • ACTION: The command being executed by deb-get. Supported values are update, upgrade, show, install, reinstall, remove, purge, prettylist and fix-installed. ACTION for csvlist is prettylist.
  • APP: The name of the package.
  • CACHE_FILE: The path to the cached file for website and github packages.

The helper functions available to the package definition file are the following:

  • unroll_url: Handles redirection and returns the final URL.
  • get_github_releases: Sets METHOD to github and saves the GitHub releases JSON file from GitHub API to CACHE_FILE.
  • get_website: Sets METHOD to website and saves the HTML file to CACHE_FILE.

Use the following package definition templates as reference for adding a new package to the repository, according to the installation method of the package. The package definition files already implemented in the main repository can serve as further reference.

APT repository

If the keyring file is in the ASCII-armored format (extension *.asc), use this template:

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
ASC_KEY_URL=""
APT_LIST_NAME=""
APT_REPO_URL=""
APT_REPO_OPTIONS="arch=${HOST_ARCH}"
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

If the keyring file is in the binary format instead (extension *.gpg), use this template:

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
GPG_KEY_URL=""
APT_LIST_NAME=""
APT_REPO_URL=""
APT_REPO_OPTIONS="arch=${HOST_ARCH}"
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

If the keyring file must be fetched from a keyserver by ID use this template:

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
GPG_KEY_ID=""
APT_LIST_NAME=""
APT_REPO_URL=""
APT_REPO_OPTIONS="arch=${HOST_ARCH}"
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

Launchpad PPA

DEFVER=1
PPA="ppa:<person>/<archive>"
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

GitHub releases

Replace <user-organization> and <repository> with the correct values:

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
get_github_releases "<user-organization>/<repository>" "latest"
if [ "${ACTION}" != prettylist ]; then
    URL="$(grep "browser_download_url.*\.deb\"" "${CACHE_FILE}" | head -n1 | cut -d <delimiter> -f <field>)"
    VERSION_PUBLISHED="$(echo "${URL}" | cut -d <delimiter> -f <field>)"
fi
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

Website download

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
get_website "<website>"
if [ "${ACTION}" != prettylist ]; then
    URL="$(grep "<pattern>" "${CACHE_FILE}" | head -n1 | cut -d <delimiter> -f <field>)"
    VERSION_PUBLISHED="$(echo "${URL}" | cut -d <delimiter> -f <field>)"
fi
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""

Direct download

DEFVER=1
ARCHS_SUPPORTED="amd64 arm64 armhf"
CODENAMES_SUPPORTED="buster bullseye bookworm trixie sid focal jammy lunar mantic noble"
if [ "${ACTION}" != prettylist ]; then
    URL="$(unroll_url "<website>")"
    VERSION_PUBLISHED="$(echo "${URL}" | cut -d <delimiter> -f <field>)"
fi
EULA=""
PRETTY_NAME=""
WEBSITE=""
SUMMARY=""