DISCONTINUED: See repoctl

repo-keep is the successor to repo-update. repo-update was a supplement to repo-add, which simplified updating local repositories, it was not a supplement to repo-remove however.

This changes with repo-keep, which I shall also from here on refer to as repo.

repo-keep is distributed under the MIT License (see LICENSE).

Features

Writing is hard, so to save time here is the (somewhat outdated) output of repo --help:

Usage: repo [OPTION...] <add|list|remove|update|sync> [PACKAGES ...]
Manage local pacman repositories.

Commands available:
  add <pkgname>    Add the package(s) with <pkgname> to the database by
                   finding in the same directory of the database the latest
                   file for that package (by file modification date),
                   deleting the others, and updating the database.
  list             List all the packages that are currently available.
  remove <pkgname> Remove the package with <pkgname> from the database, by
                   removing its entry from the database and deleting the files
                   that belong to it.
  update           Same as add, except scan and add changed packages.
  synchronize      Compare packages in the database to AUR for new versions.

NOTE: In all of these cases, <pkgname> is the name of the package, without
anything else. For example: pacman, and not pacman-3.5.3-1-i686.pkg.tar.xz

  -n, --noconfirm            Don't confirm file deletion
  -s, --soft                 Don't delete any files (n/a for: sync)
  -v, --verbose              Be loud and verbose
  -c, --config=CONFIG        Alternate configuration file
  -?, --help                 Give this help list
      --usage                Give a short usage message
  -V, --version              Print program version

Mandatory or optional arguments to long options are also mandatory or optional
for any corresponding short options.

Usage

Once you have created a configuration file (just run repo and it will create one for you; you need to edit the config afterwards though), repo is mostly used in the following way (which is an example):

$ makepkg -c
  [...]
$ repo update

Repo-Update Configuration File Example

The configuration file is located at ~/.repo.conf.

db_name = local.db.tar.gz
db_dir = /home/abs/packages

Limitations

Note that if you do the following, say with the program aurget (from the AUR), the behavior may surprise you:

$ aurget -Sb package1
  [...]
$ aurget -Sb package2
  [...]
$ repo add package1
$ repo update

The last command will result in repo not finding any new packages, because it compares the ages of files with the age of the database.

Tips

repo-keep makes most sense (to me) if you have a location where all your built packages end up (see /etc/makepkg.conf). Then you would do something like this:

$ makepkg -c
  [...]
$ repo update
  [...]