Setting up Repositories

A crucial part of each appliance is the repository selection. KIWI NG allows the end user to completely customize the selection of repositories and packages via the repository element.

Adding repositories

KIWI NG installs packages into your appliance from the repositories defined in the image description. Therefore at least one repository must be defined, as KIWI NG will otherwise not be able to fetch any packages.

A repository is added to the description via the repository element, which is a child of the top-level image element:

<image schemaversion="7.4" name="{exc_image_base_name}">
    <!-- snip -->
    <repository type="rpm-md" alias="kiwi" priority="1">
        <source path="obs://Virtualization:Appliances:Builder/openSUSE_Leap_15.3"/>
    </repository>
    <repository type="rpm-md" alias="OS" imageinclude="true">
        <source path="{exc_repo}"/>
    </repository>
</image>

In the above snippet we defined two repositories:

  1. The repository belonging to the KIWI NG project: obs://Virtualization:Appliances:Builder/openSUSE_Leap_15.3 at the Open Build Service (OBS)

  2. The RPM repository belonging to the OS project: {exc_repo}, at the Open Build Service (OBS). The translated http URL will also be included in the final appliance.

The repository element accepts one source child element, which contains the URL to the repository in an appropriate format and the following optional attributes:

  • imageinclude: Specify whether this repository should be added to the resulting image, defaults to false.

  • imageonly: A repository with imageonly="true" will not be available during image build, but only in the resulting appliance. Defaults to false.

  • priority: An integer priority for all packages in this repository. If the same package is available in more than one repository, then the one with the highest priority is used.

  • alias: Name to be used for this repository, it will appear as the repository’s name in the image, which is visible via zypper repos or dnf repolist. KIWI NG will construct an alias name as result of hex representation from uuid4, if no value is given.

  • repository_gpgcheck: Specify whether or not this specific repository is configured to to run repository signature validation. If not set, the package manager’s default is used.

  • package_gpgcheck: Boolean value that specifies whether each package’s GPG signature will be verified. If omitted, the package manager’s default will be used

  • components: Distribution components used for deb repositories, defaults to main.

  • distribution: Distribution name information, used for deb repositories.

  • profiles: List of profiles to which this repository applies.

  • customize: Script to run custom modifications to the repo file(s). repo files allows for several customization options which not all of them are supported to be set by kiwi through the current repository schema. As the options used do not follow any standard and are not compatible between package managers and distributions, the only generic way to handle this is through a script hook which is invoked with the repo file as parameter for each file created by KIWI NG.

    An example for a script call to add the module_hotfixes option for a dnf compatible repository configuration could look like this

    repo_file=$1
echo 'module_hotfixes = 1' >> ${repo_file}

    Note

    If the script is provided as relative path it will be searched in the image description directory

Supported repository paths

The actual location of a repository is specified in the source child element of repository via its only attribute path. KIWI NG supports the following paths types:

  • http://URL or https://URL or ftp://URL: a URL to the repository available via HTTP(s) or FTP.

  • obs://$PROJECT/$REPOSITORY: evaluates to the repository $REPOSITORY of the project $PROJECT available on the Open Build Service (OBS). By default KIWI NG will look for projects on build.opensuse.org, but this can be overridden using the runtime configuration file (see The Runtime Configuration File). Note that it is not possible to add repositories using the obs:// path from different OBS instances (use direct URLs to the .repo file instead in this case).

  • obsrepositories:/: special path only available for builds using the Open Build Service. The repositories configured for the OBS project in which the KIWI NG image resides will be available inside the appliance. This allows you to configure the repositories of your image from OBS itself and not having to modify the image description.

  • dir:///path/to/directory or file:///path/to/file: an absolute path to a local directory or file available on the host building the appliance.

  • iso:///path/to/image.iso: the specified ISO image will be mounted during the build of the KIWI NG image and a repository will be created pointing to the mounted ISO.