Portal:Packaging/Intro

Packaging is the task of building and bundling software with meta data such as the software's full name, description, a list of dependencies necessary for the software to run properly and the like. This is done so users of the software can use a package manager to conveniently install, remove or upgrade the software they use. Typical GNU/Linux distributions consist solely out of hundreds of such packages and openSUSE is no different in this regard. This makes Packaging the bread and butter development jobs for a distribution with tasks varying from writing a build description to fixing bugs in the software's source code.