pgadmin4/pkg/debian

pgAdmin Debian/Ubuntu Builds

This directory contains the build runner script for creating .DEB packages for Debian and Ubuntu.

Supported platforms

• Debian 9, 10 & 11 (testing)
• Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 20.10

Build configuration

To build Debian/Ubuntu packages, first run the setup.sh script as root to install the required pre-requisites, e.g.

# pkg/debian/setup.sh

Building packages

To build a set of packages, from the top-level source directory run:

$ make debian

or:

$ pkg/debian/build.sh

Four .deb packages will be created in the dist/ directory:

pgadmin4_<distro_version>_all.deb

A convenience package that depends on all the others.

pgadmin4-server_<distro_version>_.deb

The core server, e.g. the Python and JS code and the online documentation.

pgadmin4-desktop_<distro_version>_.deb

The desktop runtime. Requires the server package.

pgadmin4-web_<distro_version>_.deb

The server mode setup script for configuring Apache HTTPD. Requires the server package.

Building a repo

An APT repo can be created by building DEBs for the required platforms, moving them into the required directory structure, and then running a number of commands to create the required metadata. The pgAdmin repos use the following structure (which doesn't entirely follow the normal structure for APT, but does seem to work well unlike other attempts):

<root>
  bionic
    dists
      pgadmin4
        InRelease
        main
          binary-all
            Packages
            Packages.gz
            pgadmin4_4.21_all.deb
            pgadmin4-web_4.21_all.deb
          binary-amd64
            Packages
            Packages.gz
            pgadmin4-desktop_4.21_amd64.deb
            pgadmin4-server_4.21_amd64.deb
          binary-i386
            Packages
            Packages.gz
        Release
        Release.gpg
        Release.gz
  buster
  disco
  eoan
  focal
  README
  stretch
  xenial

Note that only the first branches are shown above; other branches (e.g. for buster, disco etc. follow the structure shown for bionic.

Technically there are actually multiple repos here, one for each OS release. Note also that the binary-i386 directories do not contain any packages as we're not building 32bit packages for Linux. The directories and package indexes are present though, to prevent warnings being emitted on amd64 machines which are configured to support 32bit packages as well.

In order to sign the repositories you need to import your signing private key into the gnupg2 keystore, for example:

gpg --import signing_key.priv

Once the files are in the right structure, we need to run a number of commands to generate the metadata, and sign the relevant files using GPG (in APT, we sign the repository indexes rather than the packages themselves.

To create the metadata, first we create a config file for the apt-ftparchive program in $HOME/aptftp.conf (without the start/end markers):

APT::FTPArchive::Release {
  Origin "pgAdmin Development Team";
  Label "pgAdmin 4";
  Suite "pgadmin4";
  Architectures "amd64 all";
  Components "main";
  Description "pgAdmin 4 - Development Tools for PostgreSQL";
};
Default {
    Packages::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
    Sources::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
    Contents::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
};

Next, we create the package indexes. Run the following command for each OS release to be included (in the example, we're using bionic):

for ARCH in all amd64 i386; do cd <root>/bionic && apt-ftparchive packages -c=$HOME/aptftp.conf dists/pgadmin4/main/binary-${ARCH}  > dists/pgadmin4/main/binary-${ARCH}/Packages && gzip -k dists/pgadmin4/main/binary-${ARCH}/Packages; done

Now we need to create the release file for each OS release (again, using bionic in the example:

cd <root>/bionic/dists/pgadmin4 && apt-ftparchive release -c=$HOME/aptftp.conf . > Release && gzip -k Release

Finally, we can sign the release files. Replace with the email address on your signing key:

cd <root>/bionic/dists/pgadmin4 && gpg -u <key name> -bao Release.gpg Release
cd <root>/bionic/dists/pgadmin4 && gpg -u <key name> --clear-sign --output InRelease Release

Note that it is important to run each command in the correct directory (hence the cd commands) to ensure the relative paths are created correctly in the indexes.

Repository Configuration

pgAdmin repo configurations live in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgadmin4.list. The file can be created with a command such as:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://server.company.com/apt/$(lsb_release -cs) pgadmin4 main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgadmin4.list && apt update'

Assuming that in the repository structure corresponds to https://server.company.com/apt/ from the client's perspective.

If you have signed the repository, you'll also need to import the key on the client. This is done as follows for the pgAdmin signing key; adjust the URL as needed for your own:

curl http://www.pgadmin.org/static/packages_pgadmin_org.pub | sudo apt-key add