Publish, Retain, GC, and Export

These commands cover the v0.2.0 delivery lifecycle. publish, target GC, and target selection use the targets: map in sow.yml; local retention and GC operate on a selected Repository. export rpm-leaf creates a separate compatibility artifact.

sow publish

sow publish TARGET [--abort] [-C DIR] [-T DUR | -N] [--json]

Publishes the current verified Generation of the Repository bound to TARGET. SOW plans and applies immutable payloads first, checksum-addressed metadata second, mutable pointers last, then verifies and records a checkpoint. Repeating an already-current publication is an idempotent no-op.

sow publish prod

--abort is available only before durable commit intent. It reconciles exact objects that may already have been created, retains that evidence, and abandons the attempt without copying or deleting remote objects. After commit intent, recovery is forward-only: rerun the normal publish command.

publish selects its Repository from the target and therefore does not accept --repo or --dist.

sow retain

sow retain add GENERATION [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [-T DUR | -N] [--json]
sow retain ls             [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [--json]
sow retain rm GENERATION  [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [-T DUR | -N] [--json]

retain add verifies and freezes a Generation manifest and its metadata under private state so its payloads remain explicit GC roots. retain ls is read-only. retain rm removes that explicit root; it does not itself delete package bytes. Generation arguments must be decimal integers greater than zero.

sow gc

sow gc          [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [-T DUR | -N] [--json]
sow gc TARGET   [-C DIR]           [-T DUR | -N] [--json]

Without a target, GC deletes only local pool objects unreachable from the current Generation and all retained, migration, recovery, and publication roots. It journals the operation and advances the repository Generation when bytes are removed.

With TARGET, GC maintains publication state:

A target selects its Repository, so sow gc TARGET -r NAME is a usage error.

sow export rpm-leaf

sow export rpm-leaf DIST ARCH DIR [--hardlink] [-C DIR] [-r NAME] [--json]

Exports one built RPM Dist architecture as a standalone repository with local pool/... hrefs. ARCH must be x86_64 or aarch64. Copying is the default. --hardlink is an opt-in same-filesystem optimization for a trusted read-only export.

sow export rpm-leaf el9 x86_64 /srv/export/el9-x86_64

The directory includes rewritten repodata, its package tree, a manifest, and .sow-export.json. An export is not a Membership, Generation, publication input, or GC root, and SOW rejects an output that overlaps a configured filesystem publication root.

Common flags

See also

• sow.yml Targets
• Publication Model
• Repository Layout