createrepo

createrepo [options] directory

createrepo initializes an RPM repository by creating the metadata files required by yum/dnf package managers. It scans a directory containing RPM packages and generates a repodata subdirectory with XML metadata files and SQLite databases describing available packages.The generated metadata includes package names, versions, dependencies, file lists, and checksums. This enables yum/dnf clients to query package information, resolve dependencies, and perform installations from the repository without downloading every RPM file. The tool is essential for creating local repositories, custom enterprise package distributions, or mirror sites.

-v, --verbose

Verbose output

Exclude packages matching pattern

Checksum algorithm (sha1, sha256, etc.)

Ignore symbolic links

Base URL for the repository

Update existing repository (faster)

Must be rerun after adding/removing packages. For large repositories, --update is faster than full regeneration. The original Python createrepo is deprecated; on modern distributions the createrepo command is provided by createrepo_c, a faster C reimplementation that accepts the same core options.

yum(8), dnf(8), rpm(8)

Source code