Obs Management

OBS Management

Manage packages in the Open Build Service project home:aspiers.

Build from source only

Never package pre-built binaries, AppImages, release RPMs, or other binary artifacts. Use upstream source archives or source-control checkouts and build inside OBS. This preserves reproducibility, reviewability, distribution integration, and licence compliance.

Release pages often present binaries more prominently than source archives. Verify the selected artifact contains source before adding it to a package.

Locate the project checkout

Do not hardcode the local path separator. The OBS project name is always home:aspiers, but osc's checkout_no_colon option controls its checkout layout:

• default (checkout_no_colon = 0): /home/adam/OBS/home:aspiers
• enabled (checkout_no_colon = 1): /home/adam/OBS/home/aspiers

checkout_no_colon takes priority over project_separator. An unset option means the default is in effect. Prefer an existing working copy and verify it rather than inferring its path from the current configuration, which may have changed since checkout:

for candidate in /home/adam/OBS/home:aspiers /home/adam/OBS/home/aspiers; do
    if test "$(cat "$candidate/.osc/_project" 2>/dev/null)" = home:aspiers; then
        PROJECT_DIR=$candidate
        break
    fi
done
test -n "${PROJECT_DIR:-}" && osc info "$PROJECT_DIR"

Inspect or change the option with:

osc config general checkout_no_colon
osc config general checkout_no_colon 1   # slash layout for future checkouts
osc config general checkout_no_colon 0   # colon layout for future checkouts

If no working copy exists, run osc checkout home:aspiers from the intended checkout root and let the current configuration choose the layout.

Create a package

1. Prerequisite: search OBS for pre-existing packages before packaging anything. Packaging software someone has already packaged wastes the effort and creates a competing package to maintain. Run all of these and read the results before continuing:

   osc search --package <package-name>   # package names only
   osc search --binary <package-name>    # published binaries and provides
   osc search <upstream-name>            # substring over titles/descriptions
   osc api /source/home:aspiers/<package-name>
   

   osc search --package matches package names only, so on its own it cannot answer "does this software already exist on OBS". Software is frequently packaged under a name that differs from its upstream project: a language prefix such as rust- or python-, a renamed fork, or bundled inside a larger package. Only the --binary and substring searches find those.

   Search before running osc mkpac, so that any hit is unambiguously someone else's package rather than your own new entry.

   If a package does exist, report it to the user and prefer branching it (osc branch <project> <package>) over starting from scratch, rather than silently creating a duplicate.

   Then identify the latest suitable source release.

2. Inspect the project and package working-copy status. The project checkout may contain unrelated work, so perform subsequent operations inside the new package directory and avoid broad cleanup commands.

3. Create the local package and add its source archive, spec, changes file, and optional _service definition:

   cd "$PROJECT_DIR"
   osc mkpac <package-name>
   cd <package-name>
   # Add verified source and packaging files.
   osc add <files>
   osc status
   

4. Build and validate locally:

   osc build --clean openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64
   

   A zero exit status is not enough: inspect the test output and final rpmlint report. Resolve rpmlint errors and unexpected warnings. Check the resulting RPM's metadata, file list, dependencies, and executable version where relevant.

5. Commit as soon as the package is plausibly correct. When all required generated sources are already present, prevent an unintended service run:

   osc commit --noservice -m "Initial package of <name> <version>"
   

   Do not withhold a commit pending a perfect local build. Committing is cheap and reversible, and the server builds every configured repository and architecture in parallel - coverage no single local build can reproduce. Deferring it forfeits that feedback for no gain.

   So commit once the package looks plausibly correct, and let the local build and the server builds proceed together. In particular, commit even when:

   • the local build is still running, or has not been started;
   • the local build failed for an environment-specific reason, such as a missing build dependency or a version skew between the local build root and the installed system;
   • rpmlint reported warnings that are understood and benign.

   Withhold a commit only when the package is known to be wrong - for example the source archive is unverified or came from an untrusted place, the spec references files that do not exist, or the sources are not the ones intended.

   After committing, check the server results and act on them (see Monitor builds). A repository that fails on the server but not locally is real feedback, not noise.

6. Set useful package metadata if the new package has an empty title, description, or URL:

   osc meta pkg home:aspiers <package-name> -F package-meta.xml
   

Source services

Choose service mode deliberately and do not assume every _service can run remotely:

• osc service run runs services with no mode, trylocal, or localonly.
• osc service manualrun runs services with mode="manual".
• osc service disabledrun runs services with mode="disabled".
• osc service remoterun only triggers server-side services eligible to run remotely; manual or disabled definitions are not remote source services.
• osc service runall ignores modes and runs everything locally.

Local service execution requires the corresponding obs-service-* packages. Generated files must still have a clear, verifiable source.

Monitor builds

Inside a package working copy:

osc results                                      # all configured targets
osc results -r openSUSE_Tumbleweed               # one repository
osc results -w -r openSUSE_Tumbleweed            # watch until complete
osc results -w -r openSUSE_Tumbleweed \
               -r openSUSE_Factory \
               -r openSUSE_Factory_ARM           # relevant current targets

home:aspiers contains obsolete repositories which may not provide modern build dependencies. Focus validation on requested/current targets and report meaningful unresolvable or failed results rather than treating repository-wide legacy failures as package regressions.

A result showing _repository with published* or dirty="true" can mean the scheduler has not yet produced the package result. Use osc results -w rather than assuming the package was skipped.

Results carrying a trailing * are from an older revision than the working copy. After a commit, expect the new revision to appear as scheduled before it builds; do not read a stale succeeded* as validating what was just committed.

When waiting on a build, never poll with a pgrep pattern that can match the waiting command itself. pgrep -f 'osc build' matches the shell running the poll loop, so the loop never terminates. Match on the recorded PID, or use a bracketed pattern such as pgrep -f '[o]sc build'.

Installing built packages

A local build root resolves dependencies from the configured repositories, which may be newer than the installed system. The resulting RPM can therefore be uninstallable on the very machine that built it.

Check before installing, and never force past a dependency conflict:

rpm -qpR <built>.rpm | grep -i private   # exact-version private API deps

Libraries exposing private API - Qt in particular - encode an exact version, for example libQt6Gui.so.6(Qt_6.11.2_PRIVATE_API). A package built against 6.11.2 will not load against an installed 6.11.1, even though the public so version matches.

When zypper offers to resolve such a conflict by removing unrelated packages, or by breaking the dependency, take neither. Both leave the system worse off, and a broken dependency usually surfaces later as a runtime crash. Report the mismatch and let the user decide between upgrading the system library, waiting for the repositories to converge, or rebuilding the package without the private-API linkage.

Inspect failures

osc bl openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64       # current build log
osc blt openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64      # tail of the build log
osc bl --last openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64
osc buildhist openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64
osc chroot openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64
osc shell openSUSE_Tumbleweed x86_64

Use osc version to inspect the installed client version.

Language-specific guidance

For Go modules, vendoring, reproducible version metadata, and avoiding statically linked distro packages, read Go packaging.

Authoritative references:

• openSUSE Packaging Guidelines
• OBS User Guide
• Spec file guidelines
• Packaging patches