mjhjmtu

Some situations call for manually installing a local package using dpkg -i <packagename>. Sometimes it may be further useful to leverage the functionality of apt with that package so the question is:

How do you quickly create a local repository for random packages using a Debian based linux distribution - like Xubuntu 13.04/Ubuntu?

This should be distinguished from the situation where you're trying to replicate a full package tree from an official repository and fine tuning sources priority. Random packages mean virtual packages, packages which are compiled locally or copied in a piecemeal fashion for testing purposes. Here's a simple setup based on now obsolete documentation.

First, make a directory to host the packages:

mkdir <packagedir>

Then move your .deb package files there. Execute this command from the directory above the one we just created (make sure permissions allow this!):

dpkg-scanpackages packagedir | gzip > packagedir/Packages.gz

Now create a file with extension .list in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ with the contents:

deb [trusted=yes] file:///path_to_dir_above_packagedir packagedir/

and update the apt database:

apt-get update

At this point the packages in our local repository can be installed like any other package using apt-get install <packagename>. When new packages are added to the local repository, the prescribed dpkg-scanpackages command must be issued again to update the Packages.gz file and apt must be updated before the new packages are made available. Hopefully this can be useful for testing purposes.

If you want to create a repo with the full structure that you need for tools like debootstrap, the simplest way I've found is:

1. 
   

   Create a repository directory.

   
   
   

   # mkdir -p /opt/debian
   

   
   


2. 
   

   Create a conf subdirectory.

   
   
   

   # mkdir /opt/debian/conf
   

   
   


3. 
   

   Create an /opt/debian/conf/distributions file with contents like this (adjust as appropriate for the distribution you're using):

   
   
   

   Label: Local APT repository
   Codename: jessie
   Architectures: amd64
   Components: main
   Description: Local APT repository for debootstrap
   

   
   


4. 
   

   Import your package with reprepro.

   
   
   

   # reprepro -b /opt/debian includedeb jessie /path/to/package.db
   

   
   


5. 
   

   Import a bunch of packages with a shell for-loop, e.g. everything from your APT cache:

   
   
   

   # cd /var/cache/apt/archives
   # for DEB in *.deb; do reprepro -b /opt/debian includedeb jessie $DEB; done
   

   
   

This will create an unsigned archive. It can be used with debootstrap with the --no-check-gpg option.