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Overview/x-repo — package repository

Publishing a Package

Publishing to the [x] pacman repository is a local build then commit flow. GitHub Actions never builds packages; it only deploys what is committed under public/ (see web-portal.md).

The full cycle: local build -> repo-add -> SHA256SUMS -> PR -> Pages deploy.

1. Local build

Requirements: an Arch-like environment with makepkg and repo-add available.

Package built from a PKGBUILD in this repo

Work on the package source, then build it inside its directory exactly as build-packages.sh does:

cd packages/x-release      # or packages/x-dev
makepkg -cf --noconfirm

This produces a .pkg.tar.zst (e.g. x-release-1.0-8-any.pkg.tar.zst) inside the package directory.

External package (x-scripts)

x-scripts is built in the sibling scripts repo (its PKGBUILD lives at scripts/packaging/), not here. Build it there and import the resulting tarball so the repo regeneration picks it up — either drop it under a packages/*/ directory or place it directly in public/repo/x86_64/ before running the script. There is no packages/x-scripts/ source directory in this repo.

Native .xp packages (xpm/xpkg path)

The .xp endpoint under public/x/x86_64/ is out of scope for this flow: the automated native workflow is disabled and kept for reference in docs/build-x-native-workflow.md.

2. Regenerate the repository (repo-add)

From the repository root run:

./build-packages.sh

The script:

  1. Rebuilds the configured PKGBUILD packages (x-release, x-dev) with makepkg.

  2. Copies every packages/*/*.pkg.tar.zst into public/repo/x86_64/ and deletes the build artifacts.

  3. Regenerates the pacman database from every tarball in the directory:

    repo-add -n -R x.db.tar.gz *.pkg.tar.zst
cp x.db.tar.gz x.db
cp x.files.tar.gz x.files
sha256sum * > SHA256SUMS

Do not edit x.db or SHA256SUMS by hand; always regenerate them with this script (contributing rules in CONTRIBUTING.md also forbid manual database edits).

3. Review and commit

Check what changed under public/repo/x86_64/:

git status
git diff --stat

Expected changes for a package update:

  • the new .pkg.tar.zst (and removal of the replaced version),
  • regenerated x.db, x.db.tar.gz, x.files, x.files.tar.gz,
  • regenerated SHA256SUMS,
  • the PKGBUILD change itself under packages/.

Commit the repository changes, for example:

git add packages/x-release public/repo/x86_64
git commit -m "publish x-release 1.0-8"

4. Pull request

Per CONTRIBUTING.md the contribution flow is fork, branch, pull request against the main branch. Maintainers can also commit to a working branch and open the PR directly. Merge to main once CI/validation passes.

5. Deploy to GitHub Pages

After the changes are on main, deploy the site so the new repository files go live:

  1. Go to the Actions tab of xlnux/x-repo.
  2. Run the "Deploy Website to GitHub Pages" workflow (build.yml) manually via workflow_dispatch.
  3. The workflow runs npm ci && npm run build (static export of the Next.js site including everything from public/), sanity-checks that x.db and an x-release tarball exist, then uploads ./out to GitHub Pages.

The updated packages are now served at:

  • https://xlnux.github.io/x-repo/repo/x86_64/ (pacman [x] repo)

Caveats

  • Do not run two Pages deployment workflows at once; they would overwrite each other's deployment (a pages concurrency group is defined in build.yml, and docs/build-x-native-workflow.md warns the same for the native workflow, which is disabled).
  • Keep the repository in sync with its consumers: x-release and x-dev are installed from this repo during the X distro install, and x-scripts must match the payload revision expected by the installer.

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