autobuild provides an easy way to manage a small debian (apt) build system and repository, without the hassle of configuring all the various components. Managing a debian repository becomes as easy as a one time, guided configuration and simple commands to build and release packages. autobuild uses cowbuilder/pbuilder to build packages, and uses reprepro to manage the repository.

autobuild is designed to be self-contained and standalone. The autobuild binary has no external dependencies and can be easily deployed. Furthermore, all files related to autobuild will be maintained under one directory tree (/var/lib/autobuild by default) instead of spread out over the system. It is therefore easy to move autobuild installations to different machines, back them up or remove them completely from a system. Note however that autobuild does use things like cowbuilder/pbuilder and reprepro which should be installed on the system. The one-time configuration will automatically install these dependencies if not yet installed.

You will need to have go >= 1.1 installed before building autobuild. If you have go installed, then simply run the usual configure/make:

./configure
make

This will result in a single, standalone binary, called autobuild. This binary does not have any runtime dependencies, so it can be simply copied to your target system if needed. You can also use make install which will install the binary to /usr/local/bin (unless otherwise configured) and a man page.

The autobuild binary serves as both the daemon and client, through various commands (see the man page or --help).

Before you can start using autobuild, you will have to do a one-time configuration to setup autobuild. Running sudo autobuild install will first install the necessary dependencies such as cowbuilder and reprepro. It will then continue with asking for the repository name, configuring the gpg signing key etc. After the install procedure is finished, the basic autobuild setup can be found at /var/lib/autobuild and you are ready to continue using autobuild. You should normally not have to repeat this step.