OpenSUSE.org

Reinhard Max talked about the OpenSUSE project.

"OpenSUSE.org: SUSE's answer to Fedora, just done right." :-)

Current challenges

• Different target platforms
• Patches during upstream updates
• Merge code back to external repositories
• No version update for released distributions
• Deal with differences on various distros

Build Service hosts all sources, provides build system to create packages, makes available download & mirror infrastructure. Tools are used for local operation on the workstation. Tools are open source. A public REST-based .xml API is provided. Not limited to just SUSE, open for all.

Project space provided can be compared to SourceForge except that it is for binaries where SourceForge is for source code. Automatic dependency rewriting to handle differences between different distributions a package is being built for. Supports conditionals in spec files.

Future ideas are being collected on their Wiki. Plans for translation service. Public beta open now in Q4 2006.

Provided an online demo of building a package.

—Michael A. Cleverly
Thursday, October 12, 2006 at 15:26