Open Build Service - Introducing Download Page

This is something I should’ve blogged about some time ago, but we wanted to make it a part of a bigger announcement, which did not happen so … here goes. One of the ideas how to help with Open Build Service adoption was to create some kind of download widget that would be possible to embed into upstream projects’ download pages. After a few days of work I ended up with the page that is now available from this URL:

http://software.opensuse.org/download?project=PROJECT&package=PACKAGE

It contains instructions for all distributions (like adding repo and installing the package), provides direct link to packages (which I recommend using only as a last resort solution), and for SUSE/openSUSE there are One-Click-Install buttons. The page also automatically preselects your distribution (if it’s possible to guess from user agent).

Go to http://software.opensuse.org/download?project=openSUSE:Tools&package=osc to see the page in action. You can also embed the page using slightly modified URL into your download page:

<iframe src="http://software.opensuse.org/download/iframe?project=openSUSE:Tools&package=osc"></iframe>

If you want to modify the default color theme just use the following GET attributes (acolor - link color, bcolor - background color, fcolor - foreground color, hcolor - headers color). They accept standard HTML color values like 123 or 112233 (without the #).

PS: Some projects (like for example Geogebra) are already using this, although it was not yet properly announced. Feel free to join them if you think it’s a good idea!