The documentation for ACS is lacking a whole workflow for syncing

Support
#1

From the documentation, it is not clear how ACS should be used (Alternate Content Sources — Pulp RPM Support 3.24.0 documentation, Alternate Content Sources — Pulp file Support 1.16.0 documentation).

The following workflow obviously does not work for pulp_file (similarly, for pulp_rpm):

(pulp) [vagrant@pulp3-source-fedora35 ~]$ pulp file remote create --name remoteForACS --policy on_demand --url http://fixtures.pulpproject.org/
{
  "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/remotes/file/file/382242e2-20c9-4ad0-8cfb-d4045413075a/",
  "pulp_created": "2022-06-12T19:52:15.996127Z",
  "name": "remoteForACS",
  "url": "http://fixtures.pulpproject.org/",
  "ca_cert": null,
  "client_cert": null,
  "tls_validation": true,
  "proxy_url": null,
  "pulp_labels": {},
  "pulp_last_updated": "2022-06-12T19:52:15.996148Z",
  "download_concurrency": null,
  "max_retries": null,
  "policy": "on_demand",
  "total_timeout": null,
  "connect_timeout": null,
  "sock_connect_timeout": null,
  "sock_read_timeout": null,
  "headers": null,
  "rate_limit": null
}

(pulp) [vagrant@pulp3-source-fedora35 ~]$ pulp file acs create --name fileAcs --remote remoteForACS --path "file/PULP_MANIFEST" --path "file2/PULP_MANIFEST"
{
  "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/acs/file/file/25dfb2e1-6530-47c7-897f-b0d94ea44bfc/",
  "pulp_created": "2022-06-12T19:52:20.709004Z",
  "name": "fileAcs",
  "last_refreshed": null,
  "paths": [
    "file/PULP_MANIFEST",
    "file2/PULP_MANIFEST"
  ],
  "remote": "/pulp/api/v3/remotes/file/file/382242e2-20c9-4ad0-8cfb-d4045413075a/"
}

(pulp) [vagrant@pulp3-source-fedora35 ~]$ pulp file acs refresh --name fileAcs
Started background task group /pulp/api/v3/task-groups/9486534f-a9a6-4bfb-ac4f-e7c64b5e78d0/
Waiting for task /pulp/api/v3/tasks/625ee9ee-d4c3-4700-a3dd-1ff720e85769/
..Done.
Waiting for task /pulp/api/v3/tasks/6b18fe93-5433-4335-9a03-06ec59f6beff/
Done.
(pulp) [vagrant@pulp3-source-fedora35 ~]$ pulp file repository create --name repoacs
{
  "pulp_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/file/file/6c97fdee-2645-4b88-8957-876d72d12535/",
  "pulp_created": "2022-06-12T19:52:49.368870Z",
  "versions_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/file/file/6c97fdee-2645-4b88-8957-876d72d12535/versions/",
  "pulp_labels": {},
  "latest_version_href": "/pulp/api/v3/repositories/file/file/6c97fdee-2645-4b88-8957-876d72d12535/versions/0/",
  "name": "repoacs",
  "description": null,
  "retain_repo_versions": null,
  "remote": null,
  "autopublish": false,
  "manifest": "PULP_MANIFEST"
}

(pulp) [vagrant@pulp3-source-fedora35 ~]$ pulp file repository sync --name repoacs --remote remoteForACS
Started background task /pulp/api/v3/tasks/d369ed67-d4cb-4e43-ad1b-bb35a6f9a50c/
.Error: Task /pulp/api/v3/tasks/d369ed67-d4cb-4e43-ad1b-bb35a6f9a50c/ failed: 'Error: manifest line:1: must be: <relative_path>,<digest>,<size>'

The statement " Alternate Content Sources have a global scope so if any content is found in ACS it will be used in all future syncs." should be explained in detail.

As a regular user, I would like to see a complete workflow including syncing.

#2

The documentation is lacking and I can see where it’s confusing. I agree that it needs to be updated.

To give an example use case, imagine you have a remote repo that has a slow/unreliable connection. So slow/unreliable in fact that you can’t access its content (we’ll use the repo at https://fixtures.pulpproject.org/rpm-unsigned-meta-only/ to represent this). But maybe you have some local content you could fetch from. In our example, we’ll use https://fixtures.pulpproject.org/rpm-unsigned/ to represent this. Here’s how you’d use ACS to sync this repo:

# set up the ACS and its remote artifacts
pulp rpm remote create --name rpm_acs_remote --policy on_demand --url http://fixtures.pulpproject.org/rpm-unsigned/
pulp rpm acs create --name rpm_acs --remote rpm_acs_remote
pulp rpm acs refresh --name rpm_acs

# now set up your remote and repo
pulp rpm remote create --name rpm_remote --policy on_demand --url https://fixtures.pulpproject.org/rpm-unsigned-meta-only/
pulp rpm repository create --name rpm_repo --remote rpm_remote
pulp rpm repository sync --name rpm_repo

Now if you publish, distribute, and attempt to fetch packages from rpm_repo, it should work as it will pull content from rpm_acs_remote. In fact any time you pull content, Pulp will check if it’s in rpm_acs_remote first attempt to fetch it from there first.

Hope that helps.

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