On Debian-based distros, when an app is available as a DEB or an AppImage (that doesn't self-update), but no APT repository, PPA or Flatpak, the only option is to manually download each update, and usually manually check even whether there are updates.
But, what if those would be upgraded at the same time as everything else using the tools you're familiar with ?
dynapt is a local web server that fetches those DEBs (and AppImages to be wrapped into DEBs) wherever those are, then serves these to APT like any package repository does.
I started building it a few months ago, and after using it to upgrade apps on my computers and servers for some time, I pre-released it for the first time last week.
The stable version will come with a CLI wizard to avoid this manual configuration.
Feedback is welcome :)
If I'd decide to implement something like this, I'd consider two options: local repo with
file://scheme or custom apt-transport. HTTP server is needless here. (But I'll never do this because I prefer to rebuild packages myself if there's no repo for my distro.)With that, I couldn't trigger a download when
apt updateis ran, I could only do a cron, i.e. a delay, that I do not want.I thought about that, but found no documentation on how to do it. If you have any, I'm interested.
Even just finding documentation on how to generate DEBs and APT repository metadata files was very hard.
differently hacky idea:
since you do end up with all the packages in a repository on the filesystem, and you just want to have it do this just-in-time updating when the Packages file is accessed...
what if you list it as a normal
fileapt source, but you make the Packages file a FIFO?it's a cursed idea but I'm not sure it is any less cursed than the other options we've come up with.
it may or may not help to have systemd.socket manage creating the FIFO and running the service.
What's a FIFO ?
I've also looked into VFS but found nothing I'd have the skills to implement. 😅