chef-apt-repo

Set up APT repositories for Debian.

Documentation

chef-apt-repo lets you manage apt repositories with Chef.

Simple example

To add an apt source for a PPA named "foobar/quux" just do this:

ppa "foobar/quux"

To add a repo for a package named "foobar" when using chef-apt-repo, you might do something like this in your chef recipes:

apt_repo "foobar" do
  key_package "foobar-debian-keyring"
  url "http://deb.example.org/"
end

This would add a file called foobar.list containing a deb line with the specified URL to your /etc/apt/sources.list.d and install the package foobar-debian-keyring (which is assumed to contain the GPG keys used to sign the packages in this repo).

Obtaining GPG keys from a keyserver

Of course you shouldn't just install random keyrings so it might be a better idea to actually get the key you want from a keyserver before installing the key package:

apt_repo "foobar" do
  key_package "foobar-debian-keyring"
  url "http://deb.example.org/"
  key_id "8BADF00D"
  keyserver "keyserver.example.org" # defaults to keys.gnupg.net
end

You could also omit the key_package completely, but if there is a key package it's usually a good idea to install it, since your apt keyring is always up-to-date that way.

Downloading GPG keys via HTTP

In case you prefer to get your keys via HTTP instead of a keyserver, you can do so by specifying a key_url in addition to the key_id:

apt_repo "foobar" do
  key_id "8BADF00D"
  key_url "http://keys.example.org/foobar.gpg.key"
  url "http://deb.example.org/"
end

(You still need the key id because it is used in order to determine whether the key is already installed.)

Specifying distribution and components

The commands above don't specify a distribution or a list of components, so distribution defaults to the current distribution's LSB codename (for example "lucid" or "squeeze"), while components defaults to the "main" component.

If you want to specify a different distribution or components or enable source packages, you can do so by adding the corresponding definitions:

apt_repo "foobar" do
  key_id "8BADF00D"
  key_package "foobar-debian-keyring"
  url "http://deb.example.org/"
  distribution "foobar-stable"
  components ["free", "non-free"]
  source_packages true
end

This would roughly correspond to something like this:

cat > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/foobar.list <<EOF
deb     http://deb.example.org/ foobar-stable free non-free
deb-src http://deb.example.org/ foobar-stable free non-free
EOF
apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 8BADF00D
aptitude update
aptitude install foobar-debian-keyring

Real world examples

If you are interested in seeing some simple recipes that use chef-apt-repo you might want to have a peek into the recipes directory.

Why chef-apt-repo?

chef-apt-repo predates similar functionality in Opscode's apt cookbook.

While I have no plans to deprecate this cookbook just yet, I have been working with the Opscode team to add some missing features to their cookbook.

If you are starting a new project, I would suggest that you use the Opscode cookbook instead of this one.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010-2011 Sebastian Boehm. See LICENSE for details.