restic-deb

Unofficial Debian (.deb) packaging for Restic.

This repository runs a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow that downloads official upstream restic_<version>_linux_<arch>.bz2 release assets, repackages their contents into standard Debian packages (/usr/bin/restic, man pages in /usr/share/man/man1/, and shell completions for Bash, Zsh, and Fish), runs smoke and upgrade tests across Debian and Ubuntu distros, and publishes the resulting .deb packages as GitHub Releases.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Restic project.

Building the packages locally requires docker, curl, bunzip2, and bash. Debian-specific packaging steps (restic generate, dpkg-deb --build) run inside a debian:13 container, so the build scripts work seamlessly from macOS or any Linux host without local Debian packaging tools installed.

Install

curl -LO https://github.com/codexscribo/restic-deb/releases/latest/download/restic_<version>_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./restic_<version>_amd64.deb

Replace amd64 with arm64 on ARM systems (e.g. Raspberry Pi, AWS Graviton), and <version> with the full version string from the release you downloaded (e.g. 0.19.1-1).

The package is named restic, matching Debian and Ubuntu's stock package name. Installing it cleanly upgrades and supersedes whatever distro-provided restic package (if any) is already installed.

Included features

• Executable binary: /usr/bin/restic
• Man pages: Comprehensive section 1 man pages (/usr/share/man/man1/restic*.1.gz) generated directly from the upstream restic binary
• Shell completions:
  • Bash: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/restic
  • Zsh: /usr/share/zsh/vendor-completions/_restic
  • Fish: /usr/share/fish/vendor_completions.d/restic.fish
• Documentation: Debian changelog and copyright documentation in /usr/share/doc/restic/

Supported architectures

• amd64 (x86_64)
• arm64 (aarch64)

Versioning

Package versions follow Debian's <upstream_version>-<package_revision> convention, e.g. 0.19.1-1. <upstream_version> is the upstream Restic version; <package_revision> identifies how many times this repackaging has been published for that same upstream version. A packaging-only fix can be re-released as 0.19.1-2 without waiting for a new upstream Restic release. Each <version>-<revision> combination is published as its own GitHub Release, tagged e.g. v0.19.1-1, so every past revision stays downloadable — grabbing the latest release always gets you the newest revision of the newest version.

How it works

1. scripts/build-deb.sh <version> <arch> [package_revision] downloads the matching upstream release asset (restic_<version>_linux_<arch>.bz2), decompresses the executable to pkgroot/usr/bin/restic, sets up Debian documentation (debian/copyright and rendered debian/changelog.template), and renders debian/control.template. It then runs a debian:13 container to:
   • Generate man pages (restic generate --man) and compress them with gzip -9n
   • Generate Bash, Zsh, and Fish shell completions (restic generate --*-completion)
   • Check runtime shared-library dependencies with ldd + dpkg -S
   • Compute Installed-Size
   • Build the .deb with dpkg-deb --root-owner-group --build
2. scripts/test-deb.sh <restic-deb> <version> installs the distro's own stock restic package first (exercising the upgrade path), installs the built .deb over it, checks that restic reports the expected version, exercises functional tests (initializing a repo, creating a snapshot, verifying snapshots and repository integrity), confirms man pages and shell completions are properly installed and owned by the restic package, and verifies clean uninstallation.
3. .github/workflows/release.yml runs on a daily schedule and can be triggered manually (workflow_dispatch). It resolves the latest upstream Restic release and auto-picks the next package revision. It builds .deb packages for both amd64 and arm64, smoke-tests each package across Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, 26.04 and Debian 12, 13 (including upgrading from stock distro packages), and publishes a GitHub Release if every test passes.

Caveats

• This is a repackaging of upstream prebuilt binaries, not an independently compiled package.
• No APT repository is provided; packages are distributed as GitHub Release assets.
• Upstream prebuilt Restic binaries are statically linked and include their own dependencies.

License

MIT — applies to the packaging scripts and CI in this repo only, not to Restic itself (see restic/restic for its license).