What about starting to use project-builder for native packages?

[Richard Bos]

Op woensdag 14 april 2010 23:34:02 schreef Gunnar Wrobel:
> Another reason for projectbuilder might be that we do not want to  
> fully rely on an external build service. I consider it important that  
> we are always able to build our own packages.

This is very well possible as the code of the build service is fully open 
source.  Just download it from:
http://gitorious.org/opensuse/build-service
But the build service software is course offered via packages, that have been 
on the build service.  The can be downloaded from:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Tools/ ;)
As you can see in that repository, ISO's are being build and offered via the 
build service as well.  This way you can host your own build service.  This 
local build service can be connected with other build services.

You should compare the build service as a code version repository, in this 
case it is a package version repository with all the bells and whistles.

The openSUSE project offers free a free version of build service.  You can 
freely use it, if you want.


> The fact that it currently has no OpenPKG support also means we would  
> have to wait a while until we can fully use it.
> 
> Anyhow: You made it clear that you'd still rather like to go the  
> OpenSUSE build service route. And I think it has the advantage of  
> being an easy solution.
> 
> But when I reconsidered the build service I thought we might also  
> simply use both. As far as I understand it we only need decent spec  
> files for the build service. Plus the source package. Is that right?  
> Both are things that are being delivered by project builder. So it  
> might be rather easy to do the basic template definition in the  
> project builder and only generate the source package and the spec for  
> the subsequent build service step. For all distros not supported by  
> the build service we could fully build the packages.
> 
> Do you think that might work?

If you do it this way, you'll loose a lot of capabilities of the build 
service.  Project-builder seems to be for one-man-band projects and therefor 
smaller in scope.  If you compare PB to the build service it apparently lack 
many of its features, for example automatic rebuilding of dependent packages, 
package branching, project scoped user roles, change request/review mechanism, 
remote access to build logs, publishing control, automation and user 
friendliness.

Further more the build service project is very open.  Lately many patches has 
been submitted by the community to make it possible to authenticate against 
ldap servers and the project added an additional release to support the Meego 
project:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.suse.opensuse.buildservice/11091
 

-- 
Richard