rieter/README.md

# Rieter

Rieter is both a Pacman repository server, as well as a build system for Pacman
packages.

## Goals

### Repository server

My first goal for this project is to create a convenient all-round repository
server implementation that could be used for everything from self-hosting a
local repository to managing an entire distribution's package repository. It
should be easy to deploy, lightweight, and work with any distribution. It
should support any number of repositories and packages, and work with any
package architecture.

The repositories can be populated by manually uploading packages to the server
(e.g. from a CI build), or by mirroring already existing repositories. The
mirroring feature in particular makes it trivial to set up a new mirror for a
distribution, as the server would take care of keeping the mirror up-to-date.
Another usecase for this would be creating a local mirror of your
distribution's repositories, which can greatly reduce your update times
depending on your internet connection.

Most users however don't need a full copy of a distro's package repository, so
Rieter also provides a "smart mirror" mode. In this mode, a Rieter instance
only syncs packages that have been requested before, e.g. from a previous
system update. This way, your updates will still be a lot faster as the
required packages are cached, but packages you don't use don't get stored,
saving you a lot of storage space.

### Build system

The second goal is to create an easy-to-use build system for Pacman packages.
This could for example be used to automatically build AUR packages and publish
them to one of your repositories. This can greatly reduce update times, as you
no longer need to build AUR packages locally, as this automatically happens "in
the cloud".