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4 Project Configuration

4.1 About the Project Configuration

Each project has a project configuration which defines the setup of the build system. Usually it is empty and you do not need to change anything. However, when you change it, it can be used for the following reasons:

  • Handle compatibility layers.

  • Switch on or off certain features during the build.

  • Decide which package is installed during build if there are circular dependencies.

  • Handle user decisions like package providing the same or special macros, packages, or flags in the build environment.

To view the project configuration, use one of the following methods

  • With oscUse osc meta prjconf in your working directory of your project.

  • In the OBS Web UI. Via the Project Config tab.

  • From the Local Build System. Open one of the files in /usr/lib/build/configs/*.conf to see one of the default configurations that is being used.

  • With the OBS API. Reachable via the /source/PROJECT/_config path.

4.2 Configuration File Syntax

The syntax is basically the same than in RPM spec files. However, it is independent of the used packaging format. The project configuration is parsed by OBS. This means, you can use RPM features like macros or conditions in the configuration. All lines have the form:

keyword: arguments

In the following list, the placeholder PACKAGES indicates a package base name. For example, as a package name you need the base name like gcc but not the full name as in gcc-1.2.3.i386.rpm.

The following list contains a list of allowed keywords in the project configuration:

Available Keywords in Project Configuration
BinaryType: TYPE (OBS 2.4 or later)

Binary type. This is the format of the files which will be the result of the build jobs. This gets usually set depending on the build recipe type. In some situations, for example a KIWI build job result gets converted into an rpm, it can be used to overwrite it. Possible values are: rpm, deb or none.

Sets the binary format used to set up the build environment. For example a package with spec build description may use and generate deb packages instead of RPMs. If no binary type is specified, OBS deduces it from the build recipe type. If the recipe type is also not set, OBS looks at the Preinstall package list for a hint.

BuildEngine: ENGINE

Use an alternative build engine. This is still chained inside of the build script for security reasons. Alternatives are mock (for Fedora and Red Hat) and debootstrap (for Debian). This will avoid differences in the build environment setup, but it will also have an effect on speed and reduced features. It should only be used when you want to emulate the distribution build. debbuild engine will build deb files out of a spec file description. It can be used by the following definition inside of the project build config:

Repotype: debian
Type: spec
Binarytype: deb
BuildEngine: debbuild
Support: pax
Support: debbuild
Keep: debbuild
BuildFlags: FLAG:VALUE

The BuildFlags keyword defines flags for the build process. The following values for FLAG are usable. All flags with a leading colon (:) require an additional parameter directly following them.

allowrootforbuild

Allow any package build to use root user for building. This still needs a marker inside of the build description to enable it.

vmfstype:

Defines a specific file system when building inside of a VM. Possible values are ext2, ext3, ext4, btrfs, xfs, reiserfs (v3).

vmfsoptions:

There is also an option to disable directory indexing for ext2, ext3, and ext4 file systems. This makes file ordering inside of directories reproducible but may have a negative performance impact. To apply this, specify vmfsoptions:nodirindex

kiwiprofile:

builds the selected profile in KIWI appliance builds.

logidlelimit:

Build jobs which don't create any output get aborted after some time. This flag can be used to modify the limit. Specify the seconds behind flag.

excludebuild:

Exclude a package from building. _multibuild flavors can be specified via package:flavor syntax.

onlybuild:

DANGER: this may remove many build results when introduced the first time! It can be used to maintain a whitelist of packages to be built. All other packages will turn to excluded state.

useccache:

Configure usage of ccache when building packages that match the value of this parameter. The ccache package will automatically be installed and configured. The directory /.ccache/ will be configured as cache directory. To configure ccache, the file /.ccache/ccache.conf can be modified as part of the build process by the $BUILD_USER environment variable.

In some cases, there is no archive for the current package, such as when the package was newly branched or when binaries were deleted. In these cases, Open Build Service will check whether there is a package of the same name built for the same architecture within one of the repositories configured in the project's meta configuration. If so, the archive of that package will be used. The repositories will be searched in the order they are configured in the meta configuration, starting from the top.

An alternative way to enable caching based on build dependencies is to add "--enable-cache" as dependency, for example via a Substitute rule: Substitute: gcc-c++ gcc-c++ --enable-ccache This will always enable ccache when a direct build depdency to gcc-c++ is required.

ccachetype:

Defines the ccache implementation, possible values are: ccache, sccache

obsgendiff

OBS can run an external program that has access to the current build and the previously successful result, e.g. to generate a difference or a changelog from the diff.

OBS will run all scripts in /usr/lib/build/obsgendiff.d/ on the build host (not in the %buildroot) when this flag is set. If one of the scripts fails to run or no scripts are found, then the overall build fails. I.e. if BuildFlags: obsgendiff is set, then you must provide at least one script in /usr/lib/build/obsgendiff.d/, otherwise your build will fail.

A common use case for obsgendiff is to run release-compare after the build.

setvcs

Add the SCM URL to binary results when the package sources are managed via the scmsync mechanic. The url is written into the VCS tag of rpms when enabling this functionality.

sbom:FORMAT

OBS 2.11 can produce and publish additional SBOM (Software Bill Of Material) meta data by enabling this flag. This is currently supported for container and kiwi images builds and includes only data from installed rpm packages. Supported formats are spdx and cyclonedx.

container-compression-format:FORMAT

Sets a compression format for container layers. Possible values are gzip, zstd, zstd:chunked. Every value other than gzip is only supported by podman and buildah.

Constraint: SELECTOR STRING (OBS 2.4 or later)

Define build constraints for build jobs. The selector is a colon-separated list which gets a string assigned. See the build job constraints page for details.

ExpandFlags: FLAG

Flags which modify the behaviour during dependency resolution.

unorderedimagerepos (OBS 2.10 or later)

The priority of repositories defined in an image build is usually important. This is to avoid switching repositories when the same package is available in multiple repositories. However, it might be wanted to ignore that and just pick the highest version. This can be achieved by defining this flag

preinstallexpand

EXPERIMENTAL: Preinstall also all dependencies of a preinstalled package. This may increase the amount of preinstalled packages a lot.

module:NAME-STREAM (OBS 2.10.7 or later)

Enable Red Hat-specific module support in repo md repositories. By default, modules are not used, but content can be made available by specifying the module name. To remove a module, add an exclamation mark (!) as prefix.

ignoreconflicts

Ignore defined conflicts of packages. By default these are reported as unresolvable. This switch may be useful when packages get not installed in the build environment, but getting processed afterwards. That tool, eg. some image building tool, must be able to handle the situation (eg. by just using a subset of the packages).

keepfilerequires

Dependencies on files are only fulfilled if matching FileProvides are specified in the project configuration. If those are missing, the dependency results in an "unresolvable" state for directly required files or in silent breaking of the dependency for indirectly required files. With this option, all file requires are honoured by default and lead to "unresolvable" if there are no matching FileProvides defined.

ExportFilter: REGEX ARCH

The export filter can be used to export build results from one architecture to others. This is required when one architecture needs packages from another architecture for building. The REGEX placeholder must match the resulting binary name of the package. It will export it to all listed scheduler architectures. Using a single dot will export it to the architecture which was used to build it. So not using a dot there will filter the package.

FileProvides: FILE PACKAGES

OBS ignores dependencies to files (instead of package names) by default. This is mostly done to reduce the amount of memory needed, as the package file lists take up a considerable amount of repository meta data. As a workaround, FileProvides can be used to tell the systems which packages contain a file. The File needs to have the full path.

HostArch: HOST_ARCH

This is used for cross builds. It defines the host architecture used for building, while the scheduler architecture remains the target architecture.

Ignore: PACKAGES

Ignore can be used to break dependencies. This can be useful to reduce the number of needed packages or to break cyclic dependencies. Be careful with this feature, as breaking dependencies can have surprising results.

Ignore: PACKAGE_A:PACKAGES

It is possible to define the ignore only for one package. This package must be listed first with a colon.

Keep: PACKAGES

To eliminate build cycles the to-be-built package is not installed by default, even when it is required. Keep can be used to overwrite this behavior. It is usually needed for packages like make that are used to build itself. Preinstalled packages are automatically kept, as the package installation program needs to work all the time.

OptFlags: TARGET_ARCH FLAGS (RPM only)

Optflags exports compiler flags to the build. They will only have an effect when the spec file is using $RPM_OPT_FLAGS. The target architecture may be * to affect all architectures.

Order: PACKAG_A:PACKAGE_B

The build script takes care about the installation order if they are defined via dependencies inside of the packages. However, there might be dependency loops (reported during setup of the build system) or missing dependencies. The Order statement can be used then to give a hint where to break the loop.

The package in PACKAGE_A will get installed before the package in PACKAGE_B.

Patterntype: TYPES

Defines the pattern format. Valid values are: none (default), ymp, comps.

Prefer: PACKAGES

In case multiple packages satisfy a dependency, the OBS system will complain about that situation. This is unlike like most package managing tools, which just pick one of the package. Because one of OBS' goal is to provide reproducible builds, it reports an error in this case instead of choosing a random package. The Prefer: tag lists packages to be preferred in case a choice exists. When the package name is prefixed with a dash, this is treated as a de-prefer.

Prefer: PACKAGE_A:PACKAGES

It is possible to define the prefer only when one package is creating the choice error. This package must be listed first with a colon.

Preinstall: PACKAGES

Are needed to run the package installation program. These packages get unpacked before the VM gets started. Included scripts are not executed during this phase. However, these packages will get installed again inside of the VM including script execution.

PublishFlag: FLAG

Flags which modify the behaviour during repository generation.

create_empty (OBS 2.11 or later)

Create a repository even with no content, but with meta data.

noearlykiwipublish (OBS 2.11 or later)

Only publish kiwi build results after entire repository has finished building. Without this kiwi build results get published immediately after the build is finished.

nofailedpackages (OBS 2.11 or later)

Block publishing if any build result was failed, broken, or unresolvable. This is evaluated individually for each architecture. That means, packages can be published for an architecture on which it builds, even if a package fails to build on another architecture.

withsbom (OBS 2.11 or later)

Enables publishing of SBOM files (SPDX or CycloneDX format) (.cdx.json or .spdx.json files). Please note that the building of SBOM files usually needs to get enabled via a BuildFlags switch as well.

withreports (OBS 2.11 or later)

Also publish internal content tracking files (.report files).

ympdist:NAME (OBS 2.11 or later)

Defines the distversion to be used in group element of ymp files. This is used by the installer to check if the repository is suitable for the installed distribution.

PublishFilter: REGEXP [REGEXP]

Limits the published binary packages in public repositories. Packages that match any REGEXP will not be put into the exported repository. There can be only one line of PublishFilter for historic reasons. However, multiple REGEXP can be defined.

Repotype: TYPE[:OPTIONS]

Defines the repository format for published repositories. Valid values are: none, rpm-md, suse, debian, hdlist2, arch, staticlinks and vagrant. The OPTIONS parameter depends on the repository type, for rpm-md the known options are 'legacy' to create the old rpm-md format, 'deltainfo' or 'prestodelta' to create delta rpm packages, 'rsyncable' to use rsyncable gzip compression, 'sha512' to switch to SHA-512 instead of SHA-256 checksums in rpm-md meta data files. To split the debug packages in an own published repository the option splitdebug:REPOSITORY_SUFFIX can be appended, e.g.

Repotype: rpm-md splitdebug:-debuginfo

(the repository format may even be omitted to use the default type). This results in a debuginfo package repository being created in parallel to the package repository.

Required: PACKAGES

Contain one or more packages that always get installed for package builds. A change in one of these packages triggers a new build.

Runscripts: PACKAGES

Defines the scripts of preinstalled packages which needs to be executed directly after the preinstall phase, but before installing the remaining packages.

Substitute: PACKAGE_A PACKAGES

It is possible to replace to BuildRequires with other packages. This will have only an effect on directly BuildRequired packages, not on indirectly required packages.

Support: PACKAGES

Contain one or more packages which also get installed for package builds, but a change in one of the packages does not trigger an automatic rebuild.

This is useful for packages that most likely do not influence the build result, for example make or coreutils.

Target: TARGET_ARCH (RPM only)

Defines the target architecture. This can be used to build for i686 on i586 schedulers for example. Please note that on rpm based systems just the architecture needs to be specified, but on debian systems the gnu triplet, for example arm-linux-gnueabihf.

Target: GNU_TRIPLET (Debian only)

Defines the target architecture. This can be used to build for i686 on i586 schedulers for example. Please note that on rpm based systems just the architecture needs to be specified, but on debian systems the gnu triplet, for example arm-linux-gnueabihf.

Type: TYPE

Build recipe type. This is the format of the file which provides the build description. This gets usually autodetected, but in some rare cases it can be set here to either one of these: spec, dsc, kiwi, livebuild, arch, preinstallimage, mkosi.

Defines the build recipe format. Valid values are currently: none, spec, dsc, arch, kiwi, preinstallimage. If no type is specified, OBS deduces a type from the binary type.

VMInstall: PACKAGES

Like Preinstall, but these packages get only installed when a virtual machine like Xen or KVM is used for building. Usually packages like mount are listed here.

4.3 Macro Section

Macros are defined at the end of the project configuration. The macro section is only used on RPM builds.

The project configuration knows two possible definitions:

  • %define Macro Definitions.  Starting with a %define line and are used in the project configuration only. These definitions are not available inside the build root.

  • Other Macro Definitions.  Starting after the Macros: line and are exported into the .rpmmacros file of the build root. As such, these macro definitions can be used in a spec file.

4.3.1 Macros Used in Project Configuration Only

Inside the project configuration use %define to define your macros. You can use all the features that RPM supports except you cannot define functions or call external commands.

For example, you can define

%define _with_pulseaudio 1

4.3.2 Macros Used in Spec Files Only

The macro definition in the project configuration is located at the end and has the following structure:

Example 4.1: Structure of a Macro Definition
Macros:
  # add your macro definitions
:Macros

Everything that starts with a hash mark (#) is considered a comment.

The macro definition itself are defined without a %define keyword. Start with %macroname, for example:

%_hardened_build 0
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