as you might know, ownCloud uses the Open Build Service (short OBS) to produce and distribute the binary packages for the various distributions we want to support.

The OBS is a great system as it does not only build for various Linuxes but also lets the users download the binary packages utilizing a huge mirroring infrastructure. All for you, all for the good of free software.

And there is even more: OBS offers a nice download page which can either be embedded into a projects webpage or be linked from it. Depending on the settings of the OBS project, for example the number of Linuxes it builds for, the page is adopted automatically. So you never again have to deal with lots of download links to the projects repository downloads. See the ownCloud Client Package download page as an living example.

Now the page had a shortcoming for apt based distributions. I became aware of it as the problem as well as the solution to it was nicely pointed out by this blog: Apt wants to have the key before it trusts the download source. OBS generates the key but its not obvious how to import.

This morning I told one of the brave OBS developers to the blog post and already now the solution is online. From now on, the download page also shows the exact command line to import the key. Isn’t that great how quickly things become better if a couple of people do a little bit work together?

Thanks a lot, guys, really cool…