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apkg distro

distro refers to an operating system distribution.

apkg provides simple apkg.adistro.Distro class to parse distro strings such as

  • Debian
  • Ubuntu 21.04
  • fedora-33

into distro id and optional version (if present) and provide consistent selection, matching, and formatting features.

target distro

apkg is a cross-distro tool but most of its commands operate on a specific target distro - the distro it's building packages for.

See apkg distro support.

By default, current distro is auto-detected using python distro module and used as a target distro. Check out tail of apkg status:

$> apkg status
...
current distro: arch / Arch Linux
    package style: arch
    package template: distro/pkg/arch

You can override target distro using -d/--distro CLI argument:

$> apkg status --distro debian-10
...
target distro: debian 10
    package style: deb
    package template: distro/pkg/deb

$> apkg srcpkg --distro "Ubuntu 21.04"
$> apkg build -d fedora

distro rules

apkg.adistro module contains DistroRule class to represent rules against distro id and version such as:

  • debian: any Debian version
  • debian == 11: Debian 11
  • ubuntu >= 21.04: Ubuntu 21.04 or greater
  • fedora != 33: Fedora other than 33

apkg is reusing python packaging's Version Specifiers to perform the check.

Distro rules are used during template selection and also to define custom templates in config.

distro aliases

Distro alias is a named distro rule specified in apkg config such as:

[[distro.aliases]]
name = "el-8"
distro = ["rocky == 8", "centos == 8", "rhel == 8"]

Distro aliases are available during template selection and rendering as a means to conveniently refer to a set of distros without duplicating complex rules across files.

distro in templates

distro template variable available during templating contains apkg.adistro.Distro instance representing target distro.

You can use distro to get distro id and version in various formats:

  • {{ distro }}: debian 10
  • {{ distro.id }}: debian
  • {{ distro.version }}: 10
  • {{ distro.idver }}: debian-10
  • {{ distro.tiny }}: deb10

It's possible to query target distro using distro rules from templates using distro.match() function. This allows control over templating for arbitrary distro combinations:

{%- if distro.match('debian >= 11', 'ubuntu >= 21.04') %}
  * modern {{ distro.id }}
{%- else %}
  * old distro
{%- endif %}

Full example from examples/templates/distro/pkg/deb/changelog:

apkg-example-templates ({{ version }}-{{ release }}~{{ distro.tiny }}) unstable; urgency=medium

  * new upstream version {{ version }}
  * distro: {{ distro }} / {{ distro.idver }} / {{ distro.tiny }}
  * include: {% include 'distro/common/shared.txt' %}
  * raw include: {% include_raw 'distro/common/shared.txt' %}
{%- if distro.match('debian >= 12', 'ubuntu > 21.04') %}
  * new Debian-based
{%- elif distro.match('deb-zzz') %}
  * ancient Debian-based (distro alias)
{%- elif distro.match('deb-old') %}
  * old Debian-based (distro alias)
{%- elif distro.match('linuxmint') %}
  * only on Linux Mint
{%- else %}
  * other Debian-based
{%- endif %}

 -- Jakub Ružička <jakub.ruzicka@nic.cz>  {{ now }}