apk-packager is a Docker image with an accompanying script to automate building and packaging apk packages via abuild for any architecture from any architecture.

Download the script.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hydazz/docker-apk-packager/main/build.sh

Allow the file to be executed.

chmod +x build.sh

Run the script (example, see below).

./build.sh -v latest -a <arch> -k <key> -i <input> -o <output>

The docker container can also be ran standalone, without the script

 docker run -it --rm -v <input>:/config/apk-build -v <output>:/out -e testing=true hydaz/apk-packager

<input> is the directory the APKBUILD file resides in, not the APKBUILD file

*If no private key is specified, one will be generated in the output directory.

Putting these all together in a command:

./build.sh -v latest -a amd64 -k /path/to/key.rsa -i /path/to/package -o /output/directory -t

If the build was successful, you should see Build successful! in the terminal. If you do not see this message, check the terminal for errors.

I have not incorporated an easy way to do this in the scripts, but running the commands separately doesn't hurt. Here's an example of building for all supported architectures.

#!/bin/bash
for arch in amd64 arm/v6 arm/v7 arm64 i386 ppc64le s390x; do
    ./build.sh -a $arch -k <key> -i <input> -o <output>
done

This will create the apk-packager folder in the <output> directory. Depending on what architectures you used, the folder will have separate subfolders for each architecture.

This is a big no-no, the APKINDEX.tar.gz file will be overwritten, and everything will just become a mess. To get past this hurdle extract the APKINDEX.tar.gz archive. There will be an APKINDEX text file within the archive. Move this file somewhere safe and delete the APKINDEX.tar.gz archive from the directory. Then you can run the build command. Once the build command is done, follow these steps:

• Extract the newer APKINDEX.tar.gz (make sure its the new one, the only one should be deleted but whatever)
• Open the newer APKINDEX file that was extracted from the newer APKINDEX.tar.gz
• Copy the contents of the old APKINDEX file and paste them at the bottom of the new one. make sure there is one space between the packages

Below is ran within an Alpine container.

• On a fresh Alpine Docker container, mount the apk-packager folder within the container and run apk add alpine-sdk
• cd to the folder containing the modified APKINDEX file
• run tar -c APKINDEX | abuild-tar --cut | gzip -9 >APKINDEX.tar.gz to make a APKINDEX.tar.gz archive from the file
• Run abuild-sign -k /path/to/private_key.rsa APKINDEX.tar.gz to sign the index

Follow these steps for every package and architecture; it does get tedious.

From my testing, building seems to work on any OS that supports Docker and QEMU.

Jq and Docker buildx is only required when building for architectures that are not the hosts.

macOS only requires Docker Desktop and jq to be installed for everything to work smoothly. Docker desktop can be downloaded from docker's website.

jq can be installed via brew:

brew install jq

Ubuntu/Debian doesn't have docker desktop, so setup is a little more complicated, qemu, jq, docker and docker buildx have to be installed.

Installing Docker:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | bash

The above command should automatically install docker and docker buildx if it did not install buildx (which can be validated by running docker buildx ls). Try manually installing as shown below.

Manually Installing Docker Buildx:

Docker Buildx is included in Docker Desktop and Docker Linux packages when installed using the DEB or RPM packages.

You can also download the latest buildx binary from the Docker buildx releases page on GitHub, copy it to ~/.docker/cli-plugins folder with name docker-buildx and change the permission to execute:

chmod a+x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-buildx

Verify Docker Buildx installation by running:

docker buildx ls

See here for more help installing docker buildx.

Installing jq:

apt-get install jq

Docker Desktop comes with multi-arch support out of the box. If you are running on any other operating system than macOS or Windows that does not have docker desktop, you will need to install QEMU to achieve full multi-arch buildx,

apt-get install qemu-user-static

Run docker buildx ls. This will give you a list of architectures your system can emulate.

NAME/NODE  DRIVER/ENDPOINT STATUS PLATFORMS
...
... linux/amd64, linux/arm64, linux/riscv64, linux/ppc64le, linux/s390x, linux/386, linux/arm/v7, linux/arm/v6

Currently, all architectures are supported on the latest Alpine versions. Feel free to open an issue if you need a specific Alpine version.