Purpose: This is not a comprehensive build-system like Launchpad or OBS for the general public to publish software. Armbian is about hardware enablement for SBC. APA is about making that easier for Armbian most and foremost by collecting and publishing information of how software needs to work together.

How to build locally

On a Debian-based system

sudo apt install devscripts debhelper fakeroot
git clone git@github.com:armbian/apa.git
cd apa
debuild -uc -us

How to use on your SBC

echo deb [trusted=yes] https://github.armbian.com/apa current main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian-apa.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install armbian-common

Philosophy

This repository defines and provides a number of (virtual) armbian-* packages. For example, there are a few armbian-desktop-* packages to aid in getting different desktop environments safely installed and running. Board- and arch-specific packages are another common package.

Packages in Depends: cannot be uninstalled as long as the meta-package in question resides on the host computer. Packages in Recommends: and Suggests: will be kept installed if they already are but they can be removed manually or if a package conflict requires it. Packages in Suggests need to be manually selected for installation. Packages in Recommends: can be configured to be installed automatically.

Packages from Depends of armbian-common define Armbian minimal images (network, sshd and succesful boot). Adding the Recommends defines the CLI images. Desktop image flavors include both Depends and Recommends from their respective meta packages.