Add support to backup "Packages"

[kelson42]

What would you like to happen?

"Packages" is a GitHub wording for container images. This is at least how I use it.

See here for an example:
https://github.com/orgs/kiwix/packages?repo_name=kiwix-tools

AFAIK, this blobs are not part of what is backed-up, but like releases, they are important and can not always be easily recreated.

[Iamrodos]

Metadata is more straightforward to backup. The GraphQL API is the better fit here since it lets you query packages directly by repository, whereas the REST API only scopes packages by org/user and requires client-side filtering.

Saving the actual package assets is non-trivial though. The GitHub Packages API is purely a metadata layer, it never provides a download URL for the artifact itself. To download the blob, you’d need to use the native mechanism for each package type (e.g. docker pull for containers, gem fetch for RubyGems, npm pack for npm). There’s no unified download path across registries AFAIKS.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Would be quite the effort to integrate and would require introducing new package imports I suspect.

Were you just after the metadata? Or did you want the assets themselves too?

[kelson42]

Were you just after the metadata? Or did you want the assets themselves too?

No, I backup things from GitHub to be able to move them to another forge, in case GitHub won't be able anymore to deliver the service.

From your feedback, it seems indeed complex to implement, and I might better complete my backup strategy with a dedicated container images backup module.