go-apk

A native go implementation of the functionality of the Alpine Package Keeper client utility apk.

Also includes supporting utilities for working with filesystems, including:

• an interface for a fully functional fs.FS with read-write, chmod/chown, devices, and symlinks capabilities
• an implementation of that FS in memory, i.e. a memfs
• an implementation of that FS on top of a directory, which uses the memfs for features the underlying disk does not support
• tarball features

Documentation is available at https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk.

Usage

import (
    "github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk/pkg/apk"
    "github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk/pkg/fs"
)

fsys := fs.NewMemFS()
a, err := apk.New(
		apk.WithFS(fsys),
		apk.WithArch("aarch64"),
	)
a.InitDB("3.16", "3.17") // ensure basic structures and set up the database, fetches keys for those OS versions
a.InitKeyring([]string{"/etc/apk/keyfiles/key1"}, nil)
a.SetRepositories([]string{"https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.14/main"})
a.SetWorld([]string{"curl", "vim"})    // set the packages in /etc/apk/world
a.FixateWorld()              // install packages based on the contents of /etc/apk/world

Wherever possible the methods on apk that manipulate data are available standalone, so you can work with them outside of a given FullFS.

Components

Filesystems

The native go fs.FS interface is a read-only filesystem with no support for full capabilities like read-write, let alone symlinks, hardlinks, chown/chmod, devices, etc.

That makes it useful for reading, but not very useful for cases where you need to lay down data, like installing packages from a package manager.

github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk/pkg/fs provides a FullFS interface that extends the fs.FS interface with full read-write, chmod/chown, devices, and symlinks capabilities. You can do pretty much anything that you can do with a normal filesystem.

It is fully compliant with fs.FS, so you can use it anywhere an fs.FS is required.

It also provides two implementations of that interface:

• memfs is an in-memory implementation of FullFS. It is fully functional, but remember that it uses memory, so loading very large files into it will hit limits.
• rwosfs is an on-disk implementation of FullFS. It is fully functional, including capabilities that may not exist on the underlying filesystem, like symlinks, devices, chown/chmod and case-sensitivity. The metadata for every file on disk also is in-memory, enabling those additional capabilities. Contents are not stored in memory.

Tarball

github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk/pkg/tarball provides a utility to write an fs.FS to a tarball. It is implemented on a tarball.Context, which lets you provide overrides for timestamps, UID/GID, and other features.

apk

github.com/chainguard-dev/go-apk/pkg/apk is the heart of this library. It provides a native go implementation of the functionality of the Alpine Package Keeper with regards to reading repositories, installing packages, and managing a local install.

Caching

This package provides an option to cache apk packages locally. This can provide dramatic speedups when installing packages, especially when the package is large or the network is slow and you already have a copy.

It is enabled only when the WithCache() option is provided to the New() function.

When the cache is enabled, any requested apk files are checked in the cache first, and only downloaded in the case of a cache miss. The now-cached apk can be used in subsequent calls. To ignore the cache, simple do not pass WithCache() to New().

See CACHE.md for more details on the cache structure.