Provide Generic Package Repository
Provide Generic Package Repository
Problem to solve
Provide a "raw" file package feed (like Nexus Repository) so that customers can immediately use it for any packaged binaries artifacts that we don't yet support - even if we are building it or planning to.
Intended users
- Rachel (Release Manager)
- Sasha (Software Developer)
- Devon (DevOps Engineer)
- Sidney (Systems Administrator)
Further details
A raw file feed allows generic files to be uploaded and downloaded. It could provide version metadata if it scanned the file name for specific version formats.
It can provided the following benefits:
- Function as an interim packaged binaries repository for a format not yet supported by GitLab (where there are no dependency resolution requirements). In some cases dev team generated binary packages can be downloaded and run locally if they have no dependencies or if all dependencies are in public repositories. For example custom RPM files.
- Function as an interim solution when a supported format has a specific bug or lacks a needed feature. I had this happen when a companies NuGet package format would not support files above 2GB, but the raw feed had no such limitation.
- Function as a permanent solution for formats GitLab elects not to support.
- Function as a interim or permanent solution for newly emerging binary package formats.
Proposal
- Provide the ability to upload and download arbitrary binary files in a special repository format.
- Allow scraping of version information from file name.
- Allow versioned artifacts through path name specification and a value of "latest" for the version path segment.
- Allow listing artifacts by rest api end points.
Permissions and Security
Make it match the existing model for other package formats - including reading / writing using runner tokens.
What does success look like, and how can we measure that?
Users should be able to upload, list and download packages in the feed with versioning metadata supported by being embedded in files names. Rest API endpoints can be used to list and/or pull the latest artifact.
What is the type of buyer?
This features is important in presales cycles as it allows customers to onboard regardless of packaged artifact preferences and regardless of the development status of packaged artifact technologies that are under development.
Core/Free