Improve Air-Gapped Package Integrity Validation and Download Experience

Air-gapped deployments often involve multiple transfer steps and intermediaries, each introducing potential risks. In real-world environments, packages may be downloaded through slow or unreliable proxies, transferred via USB drives, copied through internal FTP servers, or moved across several systems before reaching the final destination.

Recently, we encountered an issue where a .tar.gz file within the air-gapped deployment workflow became corrupted during transfer. As there was no checksum available for the package, it was difficult to quickly determine whether the issue was caused by a corrupted download or a transfer problem.

Suggested improvements:

• Provide a checksum (SHA256 or similar) for the complete air-gapped package generated by stanctl.
• Allow customers to validate package integrity before transferring or importing artifacts into the target environment.
• Include an integrity verification command within stanctl (e.g. stanctl verify).
• Optionally, provide a direct web-based download option for the complete air-gapped package in addition to the stanctl download workflow.

Benefits:

• Faster troubleshooting of installation issues.
• Reduced risk of failed deployments due to corrupted artifacts.
• Improved user experience in restricted and disconnected environments.
• Less support effort for both customers and IBM teams.

Air-gapped environments are already complex by nature. Simple integrity verification capabilities would significantly increase reliability and reduce time spent diagnosing transfer-related problems.