Overview

The topic update manifest aims to provide a user-readable overview of changes during system updates. The files are stored in the TOML format in the ABBS tree and converted into the JSON format on the server-side.

Examples

Below is an example for a conventional topic update manifest file:

# Security update (true/false)?
security = true
# Should we require all package and version listed below to be installed in order to match this topic update manifest (true/false, defaults to true)?
#
# This property is not allowed in cumulative manifests.
must_match_all = true

[name]
default = "KDE Updates (Winter 2023)"
zh_CN = "KDE 更新（2023 年冬季）"

# OPTIONAL: PSA message for users.
# New lines and other special formatting characters are allowed, but not recommended.
[caution]
default = """
This topic may use significantly more memory after reboot. Our testing finds
that the new KDE version may use up to 16GiB of RAM.
"""
zh_CN = """
本次更新重启后可能会需要更多内存。据我社维护者测试，新版 KDE 可能需要接近 16GiB 内存。"""

[packages]
konsole = "23.04.1-1"
dolphin = "23.04.1"
# Package removed as part of the topic.
pykde = false

Below is a "cumulative" topic update manifest file:

[name]
default = "Winter 2023 Cumulative Update for amd64 AOSC OS systems"
zh_MS = "适用于 amd64 AOSC OS 版本的 23 冬季累计更新"

# Must not exist alongside [packages].
topics = [
    "kde-survey-20231201",
    "core-12.1.0"
]

Amendment: packages-v2

In August 2025, we introduced the [packages-v2] section to help marking version ranges for important (and especially security) updates. The version range compares with the package version before the update, resolving an issue where, if the user happens to have missed the exact version defined in the metadata, they would never be prompted about the updates (in oma and potentially other package management frontends).

[packages-v2]
firefox = "<= 142"
thunderbird = ">= 108 && < 142"
seamonkey = "=141 || =142 || =143"

Files

Topic update manifest files will be stored in a special topics/ folder in the ABBS tree:

TREE/topics/kde-survey-20231201.toml
TREE/topics/llvm-16.0.6.toml
TREE/topics/*.toml

The repository server will pull the manifests from the ABBS tree, processing the them into a single JSON:

*.toml => (server pulls the manifests) => /mirror/debs/manifest/updates.json

A sample post-processed JSON file should look like this:

{
        "kde-survey-20231201": {
                "type": "conventional",
                "name": [
                        { "default": "KDE Updates (Winter 2023)" },
                        { "zh_CN": "KDE 更新（2023 年冬季）" }
                ],
                "security": true,
                "caution": [
                        { "default": "This topic may use significantly more memory after reboot. Our testing finds\nthat the new KDE version may use up to 16GiB of RAM." },
                        { "zh_CN": "本次更新重启后可能会需要更多内存。据我社维护者测试，新版 KDE 可能需要接近 16GiB 内存。" }
                ],
                "packages": [
                        { "name": "konsole", "version": "23.04.1-1" },
                        { "name": "dolphin", "version": "23.04.1" },
                        { "name": "pykde", "version": null }
                ]
        },
        "cumulative-2023H3": {
                "type": "cumulative",
                "name": [
                        { "default": "Winter 2023 Cumulative Update for amd64 AOSC OS systems" },
                        { "zh_MS": "适用于 amd64 AOSC OS 版本的 23 冬季累计更新" }
                ],
                "topics": [
                        "kde-survey-20231201",
                        "core-12.1.0"
                ]
        }
}