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.
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 can be done in a few simple steps. (These instructions assume that Alpine Linux is installed to a hard drive, rather than run-from-RAM.)
To begin, you need to update your /etc/apk/repositories file. Here are some shortcuts for doing so:
- Launch
setup-apkrepos
Enter e to edit /etc/apk/repositories. Change the version number (such as v3.2) to edge. - Or, edit the file in place:
sed -i -e 's/v[[:digit:]]\.[[:digit:]]/edge/g' /etc/apk/repositories
- Launch
The result should look like this:
Contents of /etc/apk/repositories
Next, upgrade all your packages in one shot:
apk upgrade --update-cache --available
The --available switch is used to force all packages to be upgraded, even if they have the same version numbers. Sometimes changes in musl-libc have required doing this.
sync reboot
To check your current release:
cat /etc/alpine-release
You will see the build date attached to the release.
