inapt 0.1.0

A minimal Debian/Ubuntu APT repository proxy written in Rust. Exposes a valid APT repo structure over HTTP, sourcing .deb packages from GitHub Releases.
Documentation

inapt

A minimal Debian/Ubuntu APT repository proxy written in Rust. It exposes a valid APT repo structure over HTTP but sources .deb packages directly from GitHub Release assets. Useful for distributing packages without hosting your own artifact storage.

⚠️ The following readme is a goal, it's not yet implemented...

Features

  • Exposes a Debian repository structure over HTTP:
    • dists/<suite>/Release
    • dists/<suite>/<component>/binary-<arch>/Packages(.gz)
    • pool/main/.../*.deb
  • Dynamically builds Packages and Release from GitHub Release assets.
  • 302 redirects .deb downloads to GitHub (leverages GitHub CDN).
  • Supports multiple repositories (via REPOS=owner1/repo1,owner2/repo2).
  • Caches results in memory (configurable TTL).
  • Extracts control metadata from .deb to generate proper Packages entries.

⚠️ Signing (InRelease/Release.gpg) is not yet implemented.

Quick Start

  1. Clone & configure
git clone https://github.com/yourname/inapt.git
cd inapt
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env to list the GitHub repos you want to expose, e.g.:

REPOS=myorg/myproject
SUITE=stable
COMPONENT=main
ARCHS=amd64
  1. Run
cargo run

The proxy listens on 0.0.0.0:8080 by default.

  1. Configure APT client

For now, you must trust the repo (unsigned):

echo "deb [trusted=yes] http://localhost:8080 stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/inapt.list
sudo apt update

Then you can install packages from your proxied repos:

sudo apt install mypackage

Configuration

The server is configured through environment variables:

Variable Description Default
REPOS Comma-separated owner/repo list to scan for releases
GITHUB_TOKEN Optional token (higher rate limit, private repos) none
SUITE Distribution codename (e.g., stable) stable
COMPONENT Component (e.g., main) main
ARCHS Comma-separated architectures (e.g., amd64,arm64) amd64
CACHE_TTL_SECS Cache duration for GitHub release queries 900

Roadmap

  • Add GPG signing for Release → InRelease.
  • ETag/If-None-Match against GitHub API for better efficiency.
  • On-disk cache of package metadata to avoid re-downloading assets.
  • Add by-hash support (by-hash/SHA256/...).
  • Multiple suites/components support.
  • Range proxy mode for private repositories (instead of redirect).

License

MIT — do what you want, attribution appreciated.

Status

Draft/experimental. Tested with apt on Debian/Ubuntu for basic package installs. Needs signing and caching improvements for production use.