Package: reprepro Version: 5.2.0-1 Followup-For: Bug #824521 For the record, it's not apt which adds the extra downloads, but an apt hook provided by the "appstream" package (/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50appstream).
Generating the DEP11 metadata is fairly straightforward by way of the appstream-generator package. I think it would make sense for reprepro to either allow one to provide appstream metadata as generated by that package for adding to the Release file (and signing etc with the repository key), or to generate an appstream-generator configuration file and run the tool itself. AppStream is package metadata just like Release etc files are, and if you want full repository metadata then it should be included as well.
