Creating a personal apt repository using `dpkg-scanpackages`

From time to time I build and backport deb packages. Most of them are for my personal use, but sharing them would be nice. Another advantage for setting up a personal repository over directly installing deb files is that you can install dependencies from that repository automatically. Especially useful if one source package builds multiple binary packages which depend on one another.

There is a list of programs ways how to setup such personal repository in the Debian wiki. However, I found most ways to be too cumbersome for my limited requirements. The way I’m describing below is probably the simplest and easiest way to get up and running.

First thing is installing dpkg-dev which provides dpkg-scanpackages.

sudo apt install dpkg-dev

Next put the deb files you created in some local repository such as /usr/local/debian and cd into it.

# dpkg-scanpackages -m . | gzip -c > Packages.gz

will scan all the *.deb files in the directory and create an appropriate Packages.gz file. You need to repeat this step whenever you add new packages to /usr/local/debian.

Finally to enable the new local repository, add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb [trusted=yes] file:///usr/local/debian ./

The [trusted=yes] options instruct apt to treat the packages as authenticated. Alternatively, if you want to share it with others, make sure that your webserver serves the directory and point to it

deb https://www.guyrutenberg.com/debian/jessie ./

(You will need the apt-transport-https in order to use https repositories).

Don’t forget to apt update before trying to install packages from the new repository.