Download on Demand (DoD)

by the OBS Team posted on 5th Jul 2016

Using Download on Demand (DoD) Feature

The Download on Demand feature enables you to configure a repository which only download needed packages during build time.

Why using DoD?

There are several reasons for using a DoD repository:

  • Save disk space: Only needed packages are being downloaded
  • Automatic package updates: Get updates when upstream changes
  • Simple configuration: Configurable in project meta

Using DoD on OBS

New distributions in build.opensuse.org instance get added using DoD now. This allows us to add also repositories which are not static. New repositories are the maintenance update repositories of various distributions. Ubuntu universe is also accessable now. And last but not least rolling release distributions like Fedora Rawhide or Arch.

Keep in mind that the changes in these repositories may lead to the situation that the build configuration needs to be adapted. So you might see failures during the setup of the build environment from time to time.

Full list of repositories:

  • Fedora:23 (standard, update)
  • Fedora:24 (standard, update)
  • Fedora:Rawhide (standard)
  • Ubuntu:16.04 (standard, universe, update)
  • Arch:Core (standard)
  • Arch:Extra (standard)
  • Arch:Community (standard)
  • Debian:8 (ga, update)

To add this repos to your project, go to the Repositories tab and click on Add repositories and choose Expert Mode. Please fill in your prefered project, e.g. Fedora:Rawhide, select the repository and a name and you are ready to go.

Using DoD on your own instance

Please note that you need admin privileges in order to add DoD repositories to a buildservice instance.

To do so, choose Add DoD repository in the Repositories section and fill in necessary information regarding the repo (name, architecture, type and URL).

On next build, the required packages should be downloaded on demand for that repository and the packages gets updated when a newer version is available upstream.

Troubleshooting

If you ever experience problems with a DoD repository, please make sure the dodup service is running and check the corresponding logfile /srv/obs/log/dodup.log for errors.

Documentation

More information can be found at our documentation Using DoD repositories and Adding DoD repositories.

About the Open Build Service

The Open Build Service (OBS) is a generic system to build and distribute binary packages from sources in an automatic, consistent and reproducible way. You can release packages as well as updates, add-ons, appliances and entire distributions for a wide range of operating systems and hardware architectures.

It is developed by a talented team of developers as Free Software and is used by many Free and Open Source software projects, companies and researchers. Including but not limited to SUSE the original provider of the enterprise Linux distribution, the Tizen standards-based software platform supported by leading mobile operators and ownCloud your secure enterprise file sync and share.