Thursday, 25 January 2007

Desktop LinuxNovell Enhances Linux Development With New Open Source Services

Novell has rolled out openSUSE Build Service, a framework that provides an infrastructure for software developers to create and compile packages for multiple Linux distributions. Novell also announced the immediate availability of KIWI, a system imaging tool to create live media, including Xen virtual images. As a result, open source developers can build a Linux distribution that meets their particular use case, test it to ensure product quality, and package it for quick installation, as per a statement issued by the company.

"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.

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 company is quoted to have said.