Adding Alpine Linux Edge Repository

Describe your issue

Hi, this is not exactly a Pinephone issue, but happened on it. Honestly i have looked for the appropriate issue section to ask this question and this seems to be the most right, but it's probably wrong, sorry in advance.

I would like to add Alpine Edge repository to the ones shipped by default on the Pinephone, so that i could try and test more bleeding edge applications, like gnome 3.38 applications.

What i would like to obtain is to keep stable PostmarketOS repository along with Alpine Edge repository. What i have done (and in theory should be ok) is to add it using "setup-apkrepos". I have basically make copy paste of alpine repository line and changed from "v3.12" to "edge", like the official Alpine guide suggest. In this way pull updates from stable Alpine, then if edge have a more updated version pull that and at the same time keep stable updates from PostmarketOS.

the problem that i have encountered is that i cannot run "upgrade" because "postmarketos-mkinitfs" require "multipath-tools-0.8.4.r1", while the edge branch pull a more updated package version 0.8.4.r2. That's ok, obviously PostmarketOS packages rely on stable Alpine, so i cannot update that package, fine. The problem is that i have no idea to how tell apk to keep that package at the same version, so that i can upgrade the rest of the system (where possible).

On apt this feature is obtained using "apt-mark hold package_name", so that package is maintained at the same version.

What device are you using?

I have a Pinephone PMOS Convergence Pack (3GB model).

On what postmarketOS version did you encounter the issue?

• edge (master branch)
• stable (v20.05 branch)

On what environment did you encounter the issue?

Phone environments

• Phosh
• Plasma Mobile
• Sxmo

Other

• No environment
• GNOME
• KDE Plasma
• Kodi
• MATE
• Shelli
• Sway
• Weston
• Xfce4
• fbkeyboard
• i3wm

How did you get postmarketOS image?

• from https://images.postmarketos.org
• I built it using pmbootstrap
• It was preinstalled on my device

You're probably looking for https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux_package_management#Repository_pinning

By Alexey Min on 2020-09-26T18:42:21

Yes, that's exactly what i was looking for. Sorry for the stupid question, this is the first time that i use an apk based distro, so i need to familiarize with the package manager. Thanks a lot for the help, Have a good day

By Fabio Sgamma on 2020-09-27T11:22:00

Hi, i have an additional question: how can i remove a pinned repository correctly?

I have installed a package with X@ edge (there is no space between @ and edge, i have to add it to avoid gitlab reference) and i got version Y from edge repository. After some test i decided to set edge as default instead of upgrading specific packages.

After setting edge as default, i have removed the "@ edge" pinned repositories since now egde is the default. Removing the "@ edge" repository will make apk complaining with: "WARNING: The repository tag for world dependency 'X@ edge' does not exist".

To be clear i'm not in inconsistency state, package X have the right version Y from edge, i would like to avoid that for every apk command i have to add "--force-broken-world".

I have tried a lot and the fix that i found is to del and and package again. Unfortunately among the updated package there is "musl", that i cannot obviously del and add.

Using the fix (that by default reinstall the package) do not work, seems to reinstall as musl@edge, not as simply musl.

Thanks a lot for the dedicated time, Have a good day

By Fabio Sgamma on 2020-09-27T17:50:50

What i would like to obtain is to keep stable PostmarketOS repository along with Alpine Edge repository

I'm sorry, but this is just not supported. We can't guarentee anything in edge will work with packages from stable and vice-versa. It's just asking for problems. If you want edge packages, switch your system to edge. If you want just stable packages, stay on stable.

By Bart Ribbers on 2020-09-28T09:01:49

added discussion type::support labels

Hi, the reason for this strange configuration is that, since PostmarketOS repository bring specific device packages like firmware and kernel packages (as i have understood), keeping them to stable give me more chance to boot. I can live with some broken applications, but not with an unbootable device. After saying that, i perfectly understand why it is unsupported and i thanks a lot for the given help. Maybe in a future i could switch completely to edge, but i have to understood how much bleeding edge is edge repository. I mean if edge repository can bring some broken functionality, i can live with that, but not if they make device unbootable, because a that point i need to configure another device to make a new image and flash it on mmc. Obviously there is no guarantee there won't be an update that break everything, but there are differences among distros on "how much" bleeding edge a repository is, so i have to understand this on the PostmarketOS edge repository.

Anyway thanks a lot for the efforts invested in this distro, i personally like it a lot. I've been wondering for a long time what an entirely musl-based distro would look like ... and the answer 'is very nice!

By Fabio Sgamma on 2020-09-28T10:12:47

If you only need one specific package, you can also consider building the package in question for pmOS stable yourself. Either install abuild on the device, clone Alpine's aports.git and build it that way. Or build it on your PC with pmbootstrap (after copying the aport from Alpine edge to pmaports), then host your pmbootstrap package repository over LAN:

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Installing_packages_on_a_running_phone

Looks like this question is answered, good luck!

By Oliver Smith on 2020-10-05T11:21:22

closed