Novell beefs up Linux development tools

Novell today unveiled a set of tools dubbed the openSUSEBuild Service framework designed to help software developers create and compile packages to run on multiple Linux distributions.

The openSUSE Build Service contains a server back-end and a client front-end. The server back-end hosts sources, the build infrastructure, package download and mirroring tools and communication infrastructures.

The client front-end includes the tools and interfaces needed to organise and build packages from source code, including a command line and a web-based interface.

"The openSUSE Build Service is now completely open source, giving developers and users free and full access to build their choice of Linux packages, whether based on openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu or other projects," said Holger Dyroff, vice president of outbound product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise at Novell.

Dyroff went on to state that developers can use the automated process in the openSUSE Build Service to engineer open source packages and resolve dependencies with other packages.

The build service is free, offering packages for a variety of Linux distributions, including the openSUSE.org community.

Direct access to code stored in source repositories such as Novell Forge and SourceForge is also possible, Novell added.

The source and documentation for the build service tools are hosted on Forge.novell.com within the openSUSE project. 

In addition the firm unveiled KIWI, a system imaging tool to create live media, including Xen virtual images.

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