apt-transport-oci is an apt-get plugin to support distributing *.deb packages over an OCI registry such as ghcr.io .

The motivation is to distribute *.deb packages without running a web server but using a popular fully-managed service such as ghcr.io.

If GitHub could offer fully-managed apt repo, this plugin wouldn't be needed.

• Install the apt-transport-oci plugin onto /usr/lib/apt/methods/oci:

sudo go build -o /usr/lib/apt/methods/oci ./cmd/usr-lib-apt-methods-oci

• Create /etc/apt/sources.list.d/oci.list with the following content to enable oci://ghcr.io/akihirosuda/hello-apt-transport-oci repo:

deb [trusted=yes] oci://ghcr.io/akihirosuda/hello-apt-transport-oci:latest /

• Run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install hello-apt-transport-oci

$ sudo apt-get update
...
Get:7 oci://ghcr.io/akihirosuda/hello-apt-transport-oci:latest  Packages [478 B]
...
Reading package lists... Done

$ sudo apt-get install hello-apt-transport-oci
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  hello-apt-transport-oci
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,106 B of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 oci://ghcr.io/akihirosuda/hello-apt-transport-oci:latest  hello-apt-transport-oci 0.0 [1,106 B]
Selecting previously unselected package hello-apt-transport-oci.
(Reading database ... 249739 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../hello-apt-transport-oci_0.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking hello-apt-transport-oci (0.0) ...
Setting up hello-apt-transport-oci (0.0) ...

• Make sure hello-apt-transport-oci is installed

$ hello-apt-transport-oci
Hello, apt-transport-oci

• Create /root/.docker/config.json to enable authentication.
• Non-TLS registry is supported only for 127.0.0.1
• Troubleshooting: Run apt-get -o Debug::pkgAcquire::Worker=1 update 2>&1 and grep FailReason

See ./examples .

The spec corresponds to the behavior of oras push IMAGE FILE1:application/octet-stream FILE2:application/octet-stream ... (ORAS v0.12).

• An image index MAY have multiple manifests, but all the manifests SHOULD refer to the same set of layers (because apt-get itself supports multi-arch repo).
• A layer MUST have org.opencontainers.image.title annotation that corresponds to the file name.
• A layer SHOULD have one of the following media types:
• application/octet-stream
• application/x-binary