Install osc with Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, zypper

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• git-obs
• git-osc-precommit-hook
• osc

Project history

GitHub records openSUSE/osc as created on 2011-09-23, but the tool's history is tied to the longer-running Open Build Service packaging workflow. The README identifies osc as the command-line interface to OBS and documents installation from openSUSE:Tools, from Git, and as Python-built artifacts.

The openSUSE wiki describes osc as written in Python and usable both as a command-line interface and as a Python module. It also characterizes the client as having network behavior in the style of Subversion, which explains its checkout/update/commit vocabulary and its fit for package source trees.

Adoption history

osc is part of the working culture around OBS: the official OBS user guide tells users to install osc from their distribution or from openSUSE:Tools, and notes availability for distributions including CentOS, Debian, Fedora, SLE, and openSUSE. Homebrew and other package managers also package it, which makes the tool reachable outside openSUSE systems.

Its adoption is less about casual CLI popularity and more about being the standard local tool for an OBS-backed packaging workflow. Packagers use it to manage package sources, trigger builds, inspect logs, and submit changes to projects served by OBS instances.

How it is used

Typical osc workflows include listing projects and packages, checking out package sources, updating local working copies, committing changes, viewing diffs, querying build results, reading build logs, editing metadata, and running local builds. The README's examples include osc ls, osc co, osc up, osc ci, osc diff, osc results, osc log, osc meta, and osc build.

First-time configuration stores credentials in ~/.config/osc/oscrc, with optional keyring integration. That config location matters because osc is both a package-management workflow tool and a credentialed API client for OBS.

Why package nerds care

osc is important to package nerds because it is a CLI frontend to a multi-distribution build farm. It bridges source package maintenance, metadata, repository targets, build logs, submit requests, and local build reproduction in one command namespace.

The package also shows how distro tooling differs from application package managers: osc is not resolving app dependencies for one project, it is operating against remote build infrastructure that produces RPMs and other distribution artifacts across targets.

Timeline

• 2011-09-23: GitHub repository created.
• The OBS user guide documents osc as the command-line tool for working with Open Build Service.
• The openSUSE wiki documents osc's Python implementation, Subversion-style network behavior, and role as client for OBS source repositories.

Related projects

• Open Build Service is the server-side build and repository platform. The openSUSE:Tools repository distributes osc packages for users who want stable packaged builds, while OBS:Server:Unstable carries builds from the development branch.

Sources

• https://api.github.com/repos/openSUSE/osc
• https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:OSC
• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/osc
• https://github.com/openSUSE/osc
• https://openbuildservice.org/help/manuals/obs-user-guide/cha-obs-osc
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openSUSE/osc/master/README.md