paketformat

Paketformat is a packaging format designed to encapsulate software packages and their metadata into a single portable artifact. It is intended to support reproducible deployments, offline installation, and robust dependency resolution across multiple platforms. The format is defined by a formal schema and reference tooling capable of creating, inspecting, validating, and distributing paketformat bundles.

A paketformat bundle typically stores a versioned header, an index that lists contained packages with their metadata, and one or more package blobs that represent the actual content. Each package entry includes fields such as name, version, size, a cryptographic checksum, a list of dependencies with version constraints, and optional lifecycle scripts. Bundles may also contain a manifest or metadata.json that provides repository-level information, authorship, license, and provenance.

Security and integrity are core concerns. Bundles are often signed with a digital signature and include checksums to detect tampering. The format supports platform tagging (operating system, architecture) and optional compression to reduce size.

Workflows typically involve creating a paketformat bundle during release, distributing it to a package repository or build cache, and installing by resolving dependencies, verifying signatures, and extracting blobs to the target filesystem. Change management and rollback are supported through metadata about previous bundle versions.

See also: package manager, software packaging, archive format, dependency graph.