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 v3.22 or latest-stable) therein need to be pointing to edge as follows.

Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

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

When using edge branch, testing repository can be added as a tagged repository as shown above. Remember that, packages in testing repository have no support.

Warning: Do not enable Main/Community repositories from both stable release branch and edge 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.

After upgrading to edge, the currently installed edge version i.e the build date that is attached to the edge release may be checked with command:

$ cat /etc/alpine-release

Warning: Do not enable stable and edge repos at the same time! This can break your system! Either use edge or stable!.

See also