Just over 7 months ago, I blogged about extrepo, my answer to the "how do you safely install software on Debian without downloading random scripts off the Internet and running them as root" question. I also held a talk during the recent "MiniDebConf Online" that was held, well, online.
The most important part of extrepo is "what can you install through it". If the number of available repositories is too low, there's really no reason to use it. So, I thought, let's look what we have after 7 months...
To cut to the chase, there's a bunch of interesting content there, although not all of it has a "main" policy. Each of these can be enabled by installing extrepo
, and then running extrepo enable <reponame>
, where <reponame>
is the name of the repository.
Note that the list is not exhaustive, but I intend to show that even though we're nowhere near complete, extrepo
is already quite useful in its current state:
Free software
- The
debian_official
,debian_backports
, anddebian_experimental
repositories contain Debian's official, backports, and experimental repositories, respectively. These shouldn't have to be managed throughextrepo
, but then again it might be useful for someone, so I decided to just add them anyway. The config here uses thedeb.debian.org
alias for CDN-backed package mirrors. - The
belgium_eid
repository contains the Belgian eID software. Obviously this is added, since I'm upstream for eID, and as such it was a large motivating factor for me to actually write extrepo in the first place. elastic
: the elasticsearch software.- Some repositories, such as
dovecot
,winehq
andbareos
contain upstream versions of their respective software. These two repositories contain software that is available in Debian, too; but their upstreams package their most recent release independently, and some people might prefer to run those instead. The
sury
,fai
, andpostgresql
repositories, as well as a number of repositories such asopenstack_rocky
,openstack_train
,haproxy-1.5
andhaproxy-2.0
(there are more) contain more recent versions of software packaged in Debian already by the same maintainer of that package repository. For thesury
repository, that is PHP; for the others, the name should give it away.The difference between these repositories and the ones above is that it is the official Debian maintainer for the same software who maintains the repository, which is not the case for the others.
- The
vscodium
repository contains the unencumbered version of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code; i.e., thecodium
version of Visual Studio Code is tocode
as thechromium
browser is tochrome
: it is a build of the same softare, but without the non-free bits that makecode
not entirely Free Software. - While Debian ships with at least two browsers (Firefox and Chromium), additional browsers are available through
extrepo
, too. Theiridiumbrowser
repository contains a Chromium-based browser that focuses on privacy. - Speaking of privacy, perhaps you might want to try out the
torproject
repository. - For those who want to do Cloud Computing on Debian in ways that isn't covered by Openstack, there is a
kubernetes
repository that contains the Kubernetes stack, the as well as thegoogle_cloud
one containing the Google Cloud SDK.
Non-free software
While these are available to be installed through extrepo
, please note that non-free
and contrib
repositories are disabled by default. In order to enable these repositories, you must first enable them; this can be accomplished through /etc/extrepo/config.yaml
.
- In case you don't care about freedom and want the official build of Visual Studio Code, the
vscode
repository contains it. - While we're on the subject of Microsoft, there's also Microsoft Teams available in the
msteams
repository. And, hey,skype
. - For those who are not satisfied with the free browsers in Debian or any of the free repositories, there's
opera
andgoogle_chrome
. - The
docker-ce
repository contains the official build of Docker CE. While this is the free "community edition" that should have free licenses, I could not find a licensing statement anywhere, and therefore I'm not 100% sure whether this repository is actually free software. For that reason, it is currently marked as a non-free one. Merge Requests for rectifying that from someone with more information on the actual licensing situation of Docker CE would be welcome... - For gamers, there's Valve's
steam
repository.
Again, the above lists are not meant to be exhaustive.
Special thanks go out to Russ Allbery, Kim Alvefur, Vincent Bernat, Nick Black, Arnaud Ferraris, Thorsten Glaser, Thomas Goirand, Juri Grabowski, Paolo Greppi, and Josh Triplett, for helping me build the current list of repositories.
Is your favourite repository not listed? Create a configuration based on template.yaml, and file a merge request!
https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux
Do you know whether this implementation can be considered free software and, as such, packaged into Debian Main. If not, could it be packaged for Extrepo?
@Carlos,
It would seem that that is more a contrib thing rather than a main one, but that's just my opinion. Feel free to file an RFP to get it packaged.
As for extrepo, I should clarify that extrepo is not a package repository. If you package something in a repository that is not part of Debian, I can point to it from extrepo. However, I cannot host packages myself; that's not what it's for.
So unless someone already created a Debian repository with packages for this program, I cannot point to it from extrepo.
I guess someone made an apt repository for Discord a few days ago, after years of begging Discord to do it.
Can you put it in the extrepo list?
https://github.com/palfrey/discord-apt#discord-apt-repository
The binary discord.deb is pulled from the Discord site, available at https://discord.com/api/download?platform=linux&format=deb, which is linked to at the top of https://discord.com/download , so there is nothing stolen here.
Thank you, and please let me know if I can help.
Tim
I just sent the Discord repo maker the instructions to add to extrepo:
https://salsa.debian.org/extrepo-team/extrepo-data
I guess my previous comment was premature, sorry for wasting your bandwidth.
Tim