createrepo_rs 🦀

100% pure Rust implementation of createrepo_c — generates RPM repository metadata (repodata).

Drop-in replacement for the C version with identical output, zero FFI, and 3.5MB static binary.

🎯 Why createrepo_rs?

🚀 Quick Start

# Install
cargo install --git https://github.com/jamesarch/createrepo_rs createrepo_rs

# Or clone and build
git clone https://github.com/jamesarch/createrepo_rs
cd createrepo_rs
cargo build --release

# Generate metadata for a directory of RPMs
createrepo_rs /path/to/rpms/

# Or with options
createrepo_rs /path/to/rpms/ \
  --compress-type=zstd \
  --no-database \
  --workers=8 \
  --simple-md-filenames

📦 Features

Core

• ✅ primary.xml, filelists.xml, other.xml generation
• ✅ repomd.xml with correct checksums
• ✅ SQLite database generation (--no-database to disable)
• ✅ Multi-threaded RPM parsing (configurable --workers)
• ✅ Changlog extraction
• ✅ Provides/Requires/Conflicts/Obsoletes/Suggests/Recommends
• ✅ Weak dependencies (Supplements/Enhances)
• ✅ File type detection (dir/symlink/regular)
• ✅ Graceful Ctrl+C handling
• ✅ --update incremental mode

Compression

• ✅ gzip (default)
• ✅ bzip2
• ✅ zstd
• ✅ xz
• ✅ Configurable level

CLI (52/55 params — 100% of commonly used)

createrepo_rs --help   # Full list

Notable:

📊 Performance

Tested on macOS (M1 Pro, 16GB RAM), createrepo_c run in Docker (Fedora 40). All tests use --compress-type=zstd --no-database unless noted.

Full Generation Time (lower is better)

¹ Estimated: createrepo_c ~O(n) for RPM parsing

Worker Scaling (500 RPMs)

Compression Comparison (500 RPMs, 4 workers)

Incremental Update (--update --skip-stat)

Optimizations Applied (v0.1.4)

Primary XML generation is byte-identical to the createrepo_c C version.

🐳 Docker Test

cd docker-test
docker compose up -d
docker logs -f createrepo_client

Output:

✅✅✅ Success! createrepo_rs generated metadata recognized and downloaded by dnf!

🔨 Building

# Debug build
cargo build

# Release build
cargo build --release

# Linux static binary (musl) — requires Zig
# Install: https://ziglang.org/download/
# Then: cargo install cargo-zigbuild
cargo zigbuild --release --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

# Cross-compile for ARM
cargo zigbuild --release --target aarch64-unknown-linux-musl

🏗️ Architecture

createrepo_rs/
├── lib.rs           # Library root + prelude re-exports
├── src/main.rs      # Binary entry point, CLI handling, orchestration
├── cli/mod.rs       # Clap argument parser (52/55 params)
├── pool/mod.rs      # Parallel worker pool
├── rpm/mod.rs       # RPM header parsing via `rpm` crate
├── types/mod.rs     # Core types: Package, Dependency, RepomdRecord
├── compression/     # gzip, bzip2, zstd, xz
├── db/mod.rs        # SQLite database generation
├── xml/
│   ├── error.rs     # XML error types
│   ├── mod.rs       # XML helpers
│   ├── parse.rs     # XML parsing
│   └── repomd.rs    # repomd.xml generation
└── walk/mod.rs      # Directory traversal

📚 Library Usage

createrepo_rs can also be used as a library:

[dependencies]
createrepo_rs = { git = "https://github.com/jamesarch/createrepo_rs" }

use std::path::Path;
use createrepo_rs::prelude::*;

let mut reader = RpmReader::open(Path::new("my-package.rpm")).unwrap();
let pkg = reader.read_package().unwrap();
println!("{} {}-{}", pkg.name, pkg.version, pkg.release);

The [prelude] module re-exports commonly used types and functions:

• Compression: gzip_compress, gzip_decompress, zstd_compress, zstd_decompress, etc.
• Types: Package, Dependency, ChecksumType, CompressionType, ChangelogEntry
• RPM: RpmReader, parse_dep_version
• DB: RepomdDb, DbError
• Pool: WorkerPool, Job, ProcessingResult
• XML: XmlError
• Walk: DirectoryWalker, WalkError

📝 License

GPL-2.0-or-later — same as createrepo_c.

🙏 Credits

Original C implementation: rpm-software-management/createrepo_c

Built with:

• rpm-rs/rpm — Pure Rust RPM parser
• dralley/rpmrepo_metadata — EVR parsing reference (by @dralley at Red Hat)
• quick-xml — Fast XML writer
• rusqlite — SQLite bindings