openSUSE Build Service 1.8 and 2.0 completed

On Thursday, Novell released two versions of the free openSUSE Build Service that allows developers to create binary packages for mainstream Linux distributions and processor platforms automatically from a single source tree.

The new 2.0 major release offers a comprehensively revised web front end which is said to be faster and more intuitive than the previous user interface. OpenSUSE Build Service 2.0 also provides developers with an easily accessible overview of the submitted patches and allows the usual code review to be handled not just by one person, but also by entire groups. All users, whether they are logged in or not, have now access to a project's data and code, which enhances the transparency of the build service.

Also released on Thursday, version 1.8 of the build service was developed directly from the now superseded version 1.7. The reason for the dual release is that version 1.8 includes a detailed ACL rights management feature which was developed specially for the MeeGo project and is not yet available in version 2.0 – according to Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE at Novell, the development of version 2.0 had already progressed too far for developers to directly integrate the version 1.7-based ACL extension. The rights management feature is planned to become part of the new major release with the forthcoming version 2.1.

(djwm)