Developer(s) | SUSE, Linux Foundation |
---|---|
Stable release |
2.7 / June 6, 2016
|
Development status | Current |
Written in | Perl, Ruby |
Operating system | Linux |
Type | Web service, cross compiler |
License | GPL |
Website | openbuildservice |
The Open Build Service (formerly called OpenSUSE Build Service) is an open and complete distribution development platform designed to encourage developers to compile packages for multiple Linux distributions including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, openSUSE, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch Linux. It typically simplifies the packaging process, so developers can more easily package a single program for many distributions, and many openSUSE releases, making more packages available to users regardless of what distribution they use. Also, product and appliance building is supported by OBS.
The Build Service software is published under the GPL. In an acknowledgement of its usefulness to the wider Linux community, the Linux Foundation has announced that the project will be added to the Linux Developer Network (LDN). Also, various companies,MeeGo project and Tizen are using it for developing their distribution.
It also delivers a collaboration environment, allowing developer groups to build and submit changes to other projects.
One can either run the Open Build Service as a private installation, or utilize public instances such as the openSUSE Build Service located at build.opensuse.org, hosted by SUSE. The latter offers up to 400 build slots, but external services may impose limitations as to what packages are allowed to be hosted, so private installations are usually chosen when proprietary or legally problematic software is to be hosted.
Each packager has a "home" project by default where they can upload sources and definitions on how to build RPM or Debian packages. Commits outside the home space is possible given permissions have been granted to a developer. After each upload, the Build Service schedules the changed packages to be rebuilt. On completion, the resulting binary packages are published instantaneously to the download server, which makes them available to the public.