External repository metadata

This repository contains metadata for external repositories. It is available in a signed format from pages, which can be consumed by tools inside Debian; for instance, extrepo.

Adding your own external repository

To add metadata for your own external repository, please open a merge request to add a file called repos/debian/<your-repo.yaml> to the repository. After vetting, the merge request will then be accepted.

To test that your repository metadata follows the proper format, and that the repository contains everything the metadata describes, run tools/check-repos on your new yaml file, then run tools/validate-repo on your new yaml file. Note that this will require you to install the packages libhash-case-perl, libyaml-libyaml-perl, libwww-perl, and libdistro-info-perl.

Merge requests are preferably opened by a maintainer or representative of the repository in question, but this is not a strict requirement.

Rules for external repositories

In order to be accepted into this repository, the following rules must be adhered to.

The capitalized words should be interpreted as per RFC2119.

• Packages in external repositories MUST NOT overwrite files from packages in the official Debian repositories, except if their purpose is to provide alternate or more recent versions of software in Debian.

• External repositories MUST be signed.

• External repositories MUST declare their license policy as one of main, contrib, or non-free. The definition of these policies is as for Debian's components:

  • Packages in a component with a main policy MUST be DFSG-free, and SHOULD also provide a deb-src type. These packages MUST NOT be built with anything that is not part of the same repository or another one with a main policy.
  • Packages in a component with a contrib policy MUST be DFSG-free, and MUST also provide a deb-src type. These packages MAY use packages from non-main repositories
  • There are no restrictions on packages in a component with a non-free policy.

• External repositories MUST be maintained; that is, the software in these repositories MUST be updated when an update of the software in question is made available.

• External repositories SHOULD have a way to report bugs with the software in the repository. This bug reporting system does not have to be specific to the Debian packages, however.

The maintainers of the extrepo-data repository reserve the right to update these rules when necessary.

Reporting problems with external repositories

When there is a problem with an external repository (either the repository itself, or a package in the repository), please try to contact the maintainers of the repository in question, first. Information about the repository may be available through the "contact" and/or "bugs" items in the repository's metadata.

If that doesn't work, and/or critical issues exist with the repository, please file an issue against this repository. We will then review it, and if necessary, remove the repository from the metadata.

Licenses

The files under tools/ are available under the terms of the GPL, version 2 or (at your option) any later version.

The files under repos and the file template.yaml are available under the CC0 license (that is, public domain). Do with them what you want.