Introducing obs-tools: Doing away with ugly repository URLs on openSUSE

January 22, 2012

While I like openSUSE’s approach of ordering extra packages into addon repositories on their Build Service, I hate those ugly repository URLs. GUI users may just use the one-click install links on the package search, but command-line enthusiasts are out of luck.

To solve the problem, I’ve written two small Python scripts. obs-addrepo wraps zypper addrepo for Build Service repos:

# before
$ sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/openSUSE_12.1/ Application:Geo
# after
$ sudo obs-addrepo Application:Geo

obs-quickinstall is the 1-click installer for command-line users:

# before
$ sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Application:/Geo/openSUSE_12.1/ temp
$ sudo zypper refresh temp
$ sudo zypper install --from temp josm
$ sudo zypper removerepo temp
# after
$ sudo obs-quickinstall Application:Geo josm

Both tools are now available as the obs-tools package (Git repo). Packages are currently building on the Build Service, the project page has installation instructions.

Posted by Stefan Majewsky
Filed in The command line and I
6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Introducing obs-tools: Doing away with ugly repository URLs on openSUSE”

  2. The Techno Jesus (@Eric_Ryan_Jones) Says:

    January 22, 2012 at 23:27

    Ugh. I’ll stick with my pacman and yaourt:

    sudo pacman -S josm
    yaourt -S josm

    Reply
    • Jos Poortvliet Says:

      January 24, 2012 at 13:35

      Actually those are quite different. Adding a repo in Arch would have to be done by hand – there is no “zypper ar” equivalent.

      Not that I cared, the way zypper does it is mostly different – not better or worse. Compared to pacman the only diff you’d notice in every day usage is that zypper is faster. Unless you want to do obscure things, zypper is if course quite a bit more extensive than pacman. But this is linux, who wants to do anything weird? 😀

      Anyway, the obs-tools are very nice – seems to save some typing. Can we have these as part of zypper? so you can do say zypper in Application:Geo josm ???

      Reply
  3. Jose Says:

    January 23, 2012 at 15:57

    @The Techno Jesus

    On opensuse the equivalent is

    zypper in josm

    Reply
  4. Bernhard M. Says:

    January 24, 2012 at 12:16

    you can already use one-click URLs on commandline:
    OneClickInstallUI http://i.opensu.se/Application:Geo/josm

    Reply
  5. mxttie Says:

    January 26, 2012 at 20:24

    nice.. gotta love the quickinstall 🙂

    Reply

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