SCM/CI: Project Links and Better Handling of Disconnected Branches

We have some news to share regarding the SCM/CI integration for the Open Build Service. The feature has been extended with a link project step, allowing you to create project links in your workflows. On top of that, we improved the handling of Git branches that do not contain a workflow definition (workflow.yml file).

Link Projects in Your Workflows

One missing piece for SCM/CI integration, needed to allow full project rebuilds for PR/MR sources (stagings), was the ability to create project links. Now workflows can be extended with the link_project step, allowing you to do just that. Additionally, the configure_repositories step now supports the rebuild and linkedbuild attributes, which can be used to set the desired build options for packages from the linked project. Check out the documentation for the link_project step for details.

Ignoring Branches Without a Workflow Definition

Webhooks are not scoped to a specific branch on the Git repository and are always triggered based on the action. This led to a problem where, for example, pull requests or commits that targeted a branch without a workflow.yml file ended up being listed as a failed workflow run in the Open Build Service. This polluted the workflow run listing with false-positive results. Some users worked around this problem by creating empty workflow.yml files on those branches. This is not required anymore. From now on, we will simply drop the workflow run and report back a success message, with a hint that we did not find a workflow.yml, to the SCM service in those cases.

How To Give Us Feedback

There are two ways to reach us:

• On GitHub, by opening an issue and / or commenting on an already opened issue.
• On IRC, by talking directly to us. We are in the channel #opensuse-buildservice on Libera.Chat.

Please note that we favor GitHub to gather feedback as it allows us to easily keep track of the discussions.