Snapshots

Get introduced to the snapshot() function and what it can do.

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Preface

Sometimes, we have to package a project that hasn’t made an official release yet and only makes its git repository available to us. In such cases, we need to define a snapshot() function since it’s not allowed to clone the repository in an APKBUILD to ensure reproducibility.

The snapshot() function

This function is responsible for cloning the sources of a project, packaging them into a tarball, and uploading them to Alpine Linux servers. This way, it’s guaranteed that the tarball won’t change and that it won’t be deleted (as could happen in a git repository via a force push). A typical snapshot() function looks like this in an APKBUILD:

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