Apple’s Software Update service has the ability to offer the “correct” catalog to a client that requests simply “index.sucatalog”. This ability was first added with OS X Server 10.6.6, and involved the use of Apache’s mod_rewrite.<\/p>\n
This feature is handy, as it greatly simplifies client configuration. You no longer need to take client OS version into consideration when setting the CatalogURL for the client.<\/p>\n
Lion Server’s Software Update service has a similar capability, but this is done via a CGI instead.<\/p>\n
Since Reposado doesn’t handle the web-serving part of offering Apple software updates, Reposado itself cannot provide a similar feature: instead you must configure your web server to do URL rewrites, or write your own CGI to provide this functionality.<\/p>\n
mod_rewrite example
\n___________________<\/p>\n
If you are using Apache2 as your webserver, you may be able to configure mod_rewrite to return the “correct” OS-specific sucatalog:<\/p>\n
Here is an example .htaccess file you could place at the root of your Reposado repo:<\/p>\n
(This requires Apache2 to be configured to actually pay attention to mod_rewite rules in .htaccess files. See your Apache and mod_rewrite documentation for details.)<\/p>\n
(Note that the format for these rules is specific for use in an .htaccess file. The rules would need to be changed if in the main Apache config file.)<\/p>\n
(Other web servers such as Nginx support URL rewriting; the specifics are slightly different, but the general concepts are similar.)<\/p>\n
The current version of Reposado can help you test your URL rewrites. When catalogs are written out to disk, a key named “_CatalogName” is added to the catalog with the base filename of the catalog. This allows you to verify that the catalog being returned is the one you expect.<\/p>\n
For example, I want to test that I’m getting the Lion catalog:<\/p>\n
% curl –user-agent “Darwin\/11.4.0” http:\/\/su.example.com\/index_testing.sucatalog > \/tmp\/testing
\n% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
\nDload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
\n100 1024k 100 1024k 0 0 25.1M 0 –:–:– –:–:– –:–:– 32.2M<\/p>\n
% tail -5 \/tmp\/testing<\/p>\n
_CatalogName
\nindex-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_testing.sucatalog
\nThe _CatalogName is “index-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_testing.sucatalog”, which is what I expect.<\/p>\n
I can repeat the test for Snow Leopard, this time against the “release” branch:<\/p>\n
% curl –user-agent “Darwin\/10.8.0” http:\/\/su.example.com\/index_release.sucatalog > \/tmp\/release
\n% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
\nDload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
\n100 912k 100 912k 0 0 29.7M 0 –:–:– –:–:– –:–:– 31.8M<\/p>\n
% tail -5 \/tmp\/release<\/p>\n
_CatalogName
\nindex-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1_release.sucatalog<\/p>\n
Adding URL rewriting to your Reposado web server configuration makes client configuration much simpler, as you no longer have to worry about which OS the client is running.<\/p>\n
As the URL is being rewritten on the fly, if you goto the url in a browser you will get a 404 error.<\/p>\n
I have added the following to the .htaccess file so that I can at least see a catalog in Safari to verify the server is running.<\/p>\n