Reprepro

reprepro is a tool to create and manage debian package repositories. This page documents its installation on stage.maemo.org, the Maemo repository server.


Preparation

Before setting up the repositories, it is a good idea to have a separate partition for the repositories. From the reprepro man pages: "The most annoying problem not yet worked around is database corruption when the disk runs out of space. Ideally put the database on another partition to avoid that." So it seems clear that a large disk is necessary for the package repositories. If one is going to create a replicated repository structure, one can use drbd since that is now included in the linux kernel as of 2.6.33.

reprepro has some dependencies, notably Berkeley DB, and it recommends gnupg-agent and inoticoming. Using inotify and inoticoming to check for incoming packages is also central to the repo system, it's worth noting that inoticoming and reprepro are maintained and even written by the same person.

So, in short, I've installed these packages and their dependencies on the repository server: