Subject: Inquiry regarding v3 (ADB) migration timeline for third-party registry support

From: Shashank Taliwal <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:20:40 +0530

Hi Team,

I am currently working on implementing native support for the v3 package
and index format for Artifactory. To ensure our users have a seamless
transition, we have a few questions regarding the upstream roadmap:

   1.

   *Samples:* Are there any reference repositories currently serving the
   binary ADBd index (0x41 0x44 0x42 0x64) and Zstd-compressed packages
   that we can use for interoperability testing?
   2.

   *Upstream Timeline:* We see that Alpine 3.23.0 has transitioned the
   package manager to v3 but kept the v2 index/package format for now. Is
   there a target release (e.g., v3.24) when the upstream mirrors will start
   serving v3 ADB indices by default?
   3.

   *V2 Deprecation:* When do you anticipate the v2 plaintext APKINDEX.tar.gz
   will be considered obsolete or removed from the official mirrors?
   4.

   *Implementation Detail:* For our indexing logic, we are looking to
   utilize the --pkgname-spec (Slot 13) for deduplication. Is there any
   formal documentation on the binary alignment/constraints for this specific
   slot in the ADB schema?

Thank you for the incredible work on v3.0.0!"

Thank you

Shashank Taliwal

---

From: Timo Teras <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:29:32 +0200

Hi!

On Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:20:40 +0530

> Thank you for the incredible work on v3.0.0!"

Thank you!

Seems you also created https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/apk-tools/-/work_items/11192

The questions are answered there.

Timo