An Artifactory impostor for Conan that redirects to GitHub.
Redirectory is a server for Conan packages, or a remote in Conan parlance. From the perspective of a Conan client, it is meant to be a drop-in replacement for Artifactory.
Redirectory works by using GitHub releases as free public storage. Uploading recipes and packages creates releases in a GitHub repository based on the package reference and attaches files as assets1. Every revision of a recipe or package gets its own release2. Installing recipes and packages looks up those releases and downloads their assets.
Redirectory packages are clearly identified by their references.
Conan package references have the form ${name}/${version}@${user}/${channel}.
By default, Redirectory packages have the user github
and are hosted at the GitHub repository ${name} owned by ${channel}.
For example, the package cupcake/0.2.0@github/thejohnfreeman
is hosted at the GitHub repository thejohnfreeman/cupcake.
If you run your own server,
you can instead keep all packages in one repository
by setting REDIRECTORY_GITHUB_REPOSITORY to its owner/name.
This option requires Conan 2 and accepts references such as cupcake/0.2.0.
Leaving the setting empty preserves the original mapping.
Changing it does not move existing packages.
In the spirit of PyPI, NPM, crates.io, and Hackage, I run a free public Redirectory server at https://conan.jfreeman.dev to let open source developers like myself publish and share packages without the gatekeeping of Conan Center3 but free from the responsibility of operating a package server4.
Redirectory has been tested with Conan 1.x, with and without revisions enabled, and Conan 2.x, which always has revisions enabled.
Both uploading and downloading require the server to interact with the GitHub API. Downloading requires only read permissions, and the server supplies a shared token to serve downloads by unauthenticated users. GitHub rate limits tokens to 5000 requests per hour. The number of requests depends on the repository mode and whether your client has revisions enabled.
If you find the server cannot serve your downloads because the shared token is exhausted, then you can either wait for its limit to reset or you can supply your own GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT). If you never upload packages, then that token only needs the bare minimum read-only permissions. If you want to publish packages, then you must authenticate with that token and it needs to have write permissions for the GitHub repositories hosting your releases.
To create a PAT, navigate to your token settings and click "Generate new token". Give your token a name. If you want to publish packages through Redirectory, then under "Permissions" -> "Repository permissions", make sure it has read-write permissions for "Contents" (which will automatically include read-only permissions for "Metadata"). Otherwise, you can choose a "Public Repositories (read-only)" token under "Repository access". You can always change these decisions later by generating a new token and revoking the old one.
First, add the Redirectory server you want to use. My free public server is https://conan.jfreeman.dev.
conan remote add redirectory ${url}
Second, you can optionally authenticate to the server using a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) (see Authentication). Redirectory does not store this token5. It returns an encrypted session that expires after 30 minutes. Your Conan client stores that session in your local Conan cache and includes it with every authenticated request it sends to Redirectory.
Authenticate to Redirectory with your GitHub username and enter the token at the password prompt:
conan user --remote redirectory ${owner}
For Conan 2, use conan remote login redirectory ${owner} instead.
In the default mode, package references are of the form ${name}/${version}@github/${channel}
where ${name} matches the name of a repository on GitHub,
${version} is a tag in that repository,
and ${channel} is the owner of that repository.
You can search for available package versions:
conan search --remote redirectory ${name}
When you publish a package, Redirectory will create a tag and a release for you if none exists. In the default mode, it will add some metadata in an HTML comment in the description of that release. It is important that you never tamper with that comment.
The repository must be public and have at least one commit before GitHub can create release tags.
To publish a package, first export it to your local Conan cache and then upload it to Redirectory.
conan export . github/${owner}
conan upload --remote redirectory ${name}/${version}@github/${owner}
After publishing a package, its files will not be immediately available for installation. You must wait for GitHub to percolate the asset state across its load balancer. In my experience, this can take up to 60 seconds.
In the default mode, if you want your package to be discoverable
through conan search,
then you'll need to add redirectory as a topic on your repository.
To run your own server, install Node 24 and Docker Compose.
Copy .env.example to .env
and set REDIRECTORY_GITHUB_READ_TOKEN to a read-only GitHub token.
Then generate an encryption key and start the server:
npm run configure
docker compose up -d --build
Your server is now available at http://127.0.0.1:9595.
You can change the host port with HOST_PORT
and the application port with PORT.
You can also put the container behind your HTTPS reverse proxy.
Set REDIRECTORY_PUBLIC_URL to the external address for Conan 1 upload URLs.
Keep .env private and preserve the encryption key across updates.
The server does not need a database or persistent volume.
When upgrading from the original server,
move the shared read token from oauth.json to .env
and log in again. Your existing packages work as they are.
Upload URLs no longer contain plaintext GitHub tokens.
The default upload limit is 1 GiB per file.
To use Scaleway instead, install OpenTofu 1.8 or newer.
Publish a public linux/amd64 image using the Validate workflow
with an image tag, or your own build pipeline.
Set REDIRECTORY_IMAGE in .env to the published image digest,
and fill in your Scaleway credentials and project ID.
To create a separate project, leave SCW_DEFAULT_PROJECT_ID empty
and set REDIRECTORY_CREATE_PROJECT=true,
SCW_DEFAULT_ORGANIZATION_ID and REDIRECTORY_PROJECT_NAME.
npm run deploy
The deployment uses the same container and prints its HTTPS address when ready. By default, it uses 140 mCPU and 256 MB, and scales from zero to one instances. The first request after an idle period may take longer while the server starts.
For your own subdomain, set REDIRECTORY_DOMAIN.
If you use Scaleway DNS, also set REDIRECTORY_DNS_ZONE.
Otherwise, add the CNAME printed by the deployment at your DNS provider
(with the proxy disabled if you use Cloudflare).
Scaleway issues and renews the HTTPS certificate.
Back up .deploy/ too. It tracks the infrastructure for this checkout.
Use a separate checkout for each deployment.
To update, change the image digest and run npm run deploy again.
To remove the infrastructure, run npm run destroy.
This leaves your GitHub packages and externally managed DNS records intact.
Footnotes
-
This effectively means that files must be under 2 GB, which might be a problem for extremely large binary packages, but even a debug build of Boost clocks in at only 70 MB compressed. ↩
-
If you use Conan with revisions disabled, then it effectively gives every recipe and package exactly one revision with ID
0. ↩ -
I love that Conan Center provides a convenient default registry of curated recipes for most widely-used packages, but I still want a frictionless package registry like I enjoy in other language ecosystems. ↩
-
If you do not trust my server with your PAT, you can run your own Redirectory server with Docker or Scaleway. ↩
-
To keep my costs down, the Redirectory server doesn't store anything. ↩