Need official upload / CDN download for cloud images/metadata
We can currently build all sorts of cloud images variants for all sorts of clouds -- including "NoCloud". But we currently only have code for importing and deploying images to AWS -- and even that is starting to become somewhat unmanageable, and is funded by a single volunteer.
The current https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/cloud/alpine-cloud-images configuration supports uploading images and metadata to an authoritative place. Currently that location is...
ssh://tomalok@dev.alpinelinux.org/public_html/alpine-cloud-images/{v_version}/cloud/{cloud}/{arch}
...and all recent builds are available at https://dev.alpinelinux.org/~tomalok/alpine-cloud-images/
Ideally there should be an "official" upload location, which would get sync'd out to CDN for downloads. The https://alpinelinux.org/cloud page already has (commented-out) support for being able to download images, checksums, and metadata for all image variants from...
https://dev.alpinelinux.org/~tomalok/alpine-cloud-images/{v_version}/cloud/{cloud}/{arch}
I submit that the following URL would fit into the current CDN layout nicely, without disruption...
https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/{v_version}/cloud/{cloud}/{arch}
...So aarch64 "nocloud" images for Alpine 3.18 could be found at https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/3.18/cloud/nocloud/aarch64/
.
ALSO
Having a stable official place to store image metadata also allows us to drop the current dependency on AWS itself when building images (we need to see if a particular image is already officially published/release -- if it is, a necessary image rebuild would get its "revision" bumped, i.e. ...-r0
--> ...-r1
).
This is also an important step towards building cloud images via CI instead of manually.