Edge

"edge" is the name given to the current development tree of Alpine Linux. It consists of a APK repository called "edge" and contains the latest build of all available Alpine Linux packages. Those packages are updated on a regular basis.

Warning: "edge" is under constant development so be careful using it in production. It is possible that bugs in "edge" could cause data loss or could break your system.

End users should not use "edge" as their main day-to-day workstation or as productive system. Because "edge" is a development branch, many changes are not heavily tested (or tested at all) and packages in "edge" can and sometimes do break without warning.

However, testing "edge" is a very valuable activity which helps the Alpine Linux development to ensure that the quality of the stable releases is high. Testing "edge" is a great way to contribute to the Alpine Linux development.

An upgrade of Alpine Linux from a stable version to the rolling development version edge basically requires the same steps as Upgrading to latest release.

The crucial difference is, that when editing the /etc/apk/repositories file, all referenced repository versions (such as v3.2 or latest-stable) therein need to be pointing to edge.

When using edge branch, testing repository can be added if the packages that one needs are available only in testing repository.

Note: Remember that, packages in testing repository have no support.

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

#/media/cdrom/apks
http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main
http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community
http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing

After upgrading to edge, the currently installed edge version may be checked with

$ cat /etc/alpine-release

and referring to the build date that is attached to the release.

Warning: Do not enable stable and edge repos at the same time. This can break your system. Either use edge or stable. If you mix stable and edge repositories, you're on your own.

See also