apk: add more qualifiers widely used by scanners and tools - #818
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Many apk tools are using additional qualifiers for apk purl. Contribute the status quo as a specification. Similar to many other purls, distro= is in use by syft/grype and many other tools to provide a more specific distribution version for a given namespace. This is useful to tell apart apk from different alpine release branches. Syft uses upstream= to denote the package origin, which is loosely a source package name or "origin" in apk-tools native speak. The name is unfortunate, but it is widely used. It helps to identify and match PURLs with the vulnerability feeds - as universally vulnerability feeds are not on per binary apk name, but on the "origin" name.
This was referenced May 12, 2026
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@xnox Thanks!... do you mind to add an issue to support the discussion on this PR? I'd like to make sure we get some input from alpine for instance. |
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May 15, 2026
This adds the PURL parser adding all the remaining tests (parse and roundtrip) and implementing the missing normalization and validation checks from the currently "standard" type specs. It also adds a strict validation to make sure that only the defined qualifiers are allowed, it is disabled by default on the parser because some [reference implementation](https://cyclonedx.slack.com/archives/C01PZRT73K9/p1776087096074749?thread_ts=1776084835.516999&cid=C01PZRT73K9) and [security tools](package-url/purl-spec#818) already output PURL that are not spec compliant. The builder also now have that same strict parameter, but is true by default. Fixes bazel-contrib#126 and bazel-contrib#145
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Many apk tools are using additional qualifiers for apk
purl. Contribute the status quo as a specification.
Similar to many other purls, distro= is in use by syft/grype and many
other tools to provide a more specific distribution version for a
given namespace. This is useful to tell apart apk from different
alpine release branches.
Syft uses upstream= to denote the package origin, which is loosely a
source package name or "origin" in apk-tools native speak. The name is
unfortunate, but it is widely used. It helps to identify and match
PURLs with the vulnerability feeds - as universally vulnerability
feeds are not on per binary apk name, but on the "origin" name.