Shared / persistent package manager cache for distroboxes?

[einarpersson]

Hi!

I use distrobox assemble create --file dev.ini for creating a dev container that installs a number of binaries and then exports them to the host. I like having it all declared in a file which I have in my dotfiles git repo.

[dev]
image=archlinux:latest
start_now=true
replace=true
additional_packages="tealdeer"
....
exported_bins="/usr/bin/tldr"
...

However, every time I add a new binary to my dev.ini (under additional_packages and exported_bins) and recreate the container I suppose the package manager (pacman here) has to re-download all packages from a remote repository. I know that I could of course just run something like distrobox enter ... but I would like the .ini-file to be the single source of truth.

So I thought - can I perhaps create a directory on the host (in the home folder) and mount it in the location of the pacman cache directory in the container, so that it at least doesn't have to redownload all stuff everytime I recreate the container?

Will this pattern work, do you think?

I suppose the same thing could be asked for other package managers such as dnf and apt