publish_upstream_release_fields does not seem to affect (In)Release files

[mayrstefan]

Version
Pulp is used as a container image. We are running:

• pulp-minimal:3.106
• pulp-web:3.106

Describe the bug
Although all repositories have "publish_upstream_release_fields": true, set, the generated (In)Release files contain the default information:

Origin: Pulp 3
Codename: default
Date: ...
Architectures: all amd64
Components: all

Using pulp as a mirror for multiple external repositories they cannot be differentiated anymore (for pinning/apt preferences)

# apt policy 
Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 https://pulp.example.com/pulp/content/deb/ubuntu-2404/r-base default/all all Packages
     release o=Pulp 3,n=default,c=all,b=all
     origin pulp.example.com
 500 https://pulp.example.com/pulp/content/deb/ubuntu-2404/python default/all all Packages
     release o=Pulp 3,n=default,c=all,b=all
     origin pulp.example.com
...

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. mirror an Ubuntu repository
2. look at the generated release file

# curl -s http://pulpexample.com/pulp/content/deb/ubuntu-2404/main/dists/default/Release | head
Origin: Pulp 3
Suite: default
Codename: default
Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 06:26:26 +0000
Architectures: all
Components: empty
Acquire-By-Hash: no
SHA1:
 da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709                0 empty/binary-all/Packages
 df1892c864b3585076ff692d1d991aac88a24370               29 empty/binary-all/Packages.gz
...

Expected behavior
We would expect to see the mirror release information from the remote, like in https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/noble/InRelease

[quba42]

I cannot reproduce this. Using the quickstart example from the docs, I get the following in the Release file served by Pulp:

Origin: nginx
Label: nginx
Suite: stable
Version: 12.0
Codename: bookworm
Date: Thu, 28 May 2026 09:26:43 +0000
Architectures: amd64 all
Components: nginx
Description: nginx apt repository
Acquire-By-Hash: no

These are the expected upstream values.

Looking at the code there are three ways to get the pulp_deb default values like Origin: Pulp 3 for a structured publication:

1. Your repo version does not contain a Release object for the relevant distribution. This should not be possible if you successfully synced an Ubuntu repository.
2. Your Pulp repository has the publish_upstream_release_fields parameter set to false. You say this is not the case.
3. Your sync API call explicitly overrides publish_upstream_release_fields to false. You are unlikely to be accidentally doing this. 😉

The result of pulp deb repository show --name my-affected-repo can confirm (2.). The output of that will contain a latest_version_href. The output for pulp show --href <latest_version_href> can tell us about (1.). So those are the next things to check.

[mayrstefan]

So far I've found two cases

1. using an ansible playbook with squeezer remotes were created with a faulty list which resulted in "components": "m a i n" instead of "main". I was surprised the repo even worked. After fixing that the metadata was correct
2. there is something going on with flat repos that needs more investigation

E.g. for https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2404/x86_64/ as a remote we get

$ curl -s https://pulp.example.com/pulp/content/deb/ubuntu-2404/nvidia-drivers/dists/flat-repo/Release | head
Origin: NVIDIA
Label: NVIDIA CUDA
Codename: flat-repo
Date: Fri, 29 May 2026 07:40:15 +0000
Architectures: all amd64
Components: flat-repo-component
Acquire-By-Hash: no
SHA1:
 d388e8506f5c6fff06ee27e423ce09f73a626290           182016 flat-repo-component/binary-all/Packages
 514f9e7e4335df802174f6634fb4e26c3506b4e6            26833 flat-repo-component/binary-all/Packages.gz
$ curl -s https://pulp.example.com/pulp/content/deb/ubuntu-2404/nvidia-drivers/dists/default/Release | head
Origin: Pulp 3
Codename: default
Date: Fri, 29 May 2026 07:39:44 +0000
Architectures: all amd64
Components: all
Acquire-By-Hash: no
SHA1:
 b2899106dd98d3b9bdd42343a820a5d875732b03           178368 all/binary-all/Packages
 327d17c6eee199949ecc75b79fdb3504a7f3d6cf            26886 all/binary-all/Packages.

[quba42]

Flat repositories are a special case, because we convert them to a normal repo format during sync. I would need to run some tests on how this affects release file field handling.

[quba42]

I just ran the following test workflow:

NAME='nvidia-flat-repo-test'
REMOTE_OPTIONS=(
  --url=https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2404/x86_64/
  --distribution=/
  --policy=on_demand
)

pulp deb remote create --name=${NAME} ${REMOTE_OPTIONS[@]}
pulp deb repository create --name=${NAME} --remote=${NAME}
pulp deb repository sync --name=${NAME}
pulp deb publication create --repository=${NAME}
pulp deb distribution create --name=${NAME} --base-path=${NAME} --repository=${NAME}

And got the following in the Release file served by Pulp:

Origin: NVIDIA
Label: NVIDIA CUDA
Codename: flat-repo
Date: Fri, 29 May 2026 14:14:19 +0000
Architectures: all amd64 i386
Components: flat-repo-component
Acquire-By-Hash: no

[quba42]

Ok, I know what is going on: I see Codename: default and Components: all in your Pulp release file. => This is a simple publication.

By definition simple publications will always look like this. Perform a regular structured publication, and you should get the same result I did.

[mayrstefan]

Thank you. Looks like some automation was a bit overzealous: we have some repositories with autopublish enabled, some with multiple publications and one has hundreds of publications. I guess we need to do some cleanup next week to get the metadata in a defined state.

So there is a default publication (guess this is structured), simple and verbatim. By the way: the link to details for the verbatim type in https://pulpproject.org/pulp_deb/docs/user/guides/publish/ is a dead end (404),

[mayrstefan]

@quba42 to close this issue: is it documented anywhere that different publication types generate different metadata and that we get a mixture if we have publications of different types? Would it be possible to manually set some of the metadata also for simple publications (like Origin or Label)

[quba42]

I was able to find the high level feature overview description using the search in the docs, but you are right, it looks like links to it are broken, and it also can't be found via ToC navigation. We should fix the docs! For now, here is the link: https://pulpproject.org/pulp_deb/docs/user/?h=verbatim#feature-overview

Even if the links/doc structure was working, I don't think it goes into explicit detail about release file field handling.

The simple publication is something we invent on the pulp_deb side, so it will always use default values (it does not correspond to any one upstream release file that we could take the values from). It is also not possible to manually set the values here (since we never saw the need and hard coded them). These days we try to steer users away from using simple mode (it is not exactly deprecated, but we are not planning to improve it either).

For the normal structured mode, the release file values are determined by the relevant "release content" in your repository. This is created during sync, but can also be created manually with new values: https://pulpproject.org/pulp_deb/restapi/#tag/Content:-Releases/operation/content_deb_releases_create

verbatim publications use the synced upstream metadata directly. Since we only sync a subset of the upstream repository, this can cause its own issues around missing files. It is not usable for all upstream repositories and sync options.

The structured APT publication is really the main thing we expect most users to use 99% of the time.