Discussion: Base-apt features

[Vijai Kumar K <vijaikumar.kanagarajan@gmail.com>]

Hi All,

Starting this thread to discuss the base-apt features and limitations.

Here I am listing down some of the issues/features and possibly the
need for them.


1. Support for adding source packages.

Currently we have support only for binaries. The corresponding source
files could also be added. 


2. Support for using password protected keys.

It is a good practice to have the gpg key protected to have an additional
level of security. Right now ISAR does not have provisions to use password
protected keys.


3. Support for specifying the signing key.

Right now, the signing mechanism uses the default gpg key of the system.
This is problematic in many ways. Especially for CI. In the current
implementation, eventhough we specify the key, we are not really using it.


4. Support for adding packages only to base-apt.

Sometimes, we might need a package to be present in base-apt but not in
the target yet. Things like dev & dbg packages. It would be good if we
have something like BASE_APT_INSTALL which contains the list which would
be populated only in base-apt.


5. Refactoring code to consolidate reprepro calls.

Right now, reprepro calls are spread across the build system. Its dependencies
are spread across too(Handling envs like GNUPGHOME, distributions file etc).
My first thought is to have a seperate module implemented to handle these
calls.

Like how https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/blob/master/meta/lib/oe/gpg_sign.py
is used for all signing purpose.

Please add more if you have some features/limitations which needs to be addressed.

Thanks,
Vijai Kumar K