How to create a watch file for a tarball found on the OBS (Open Build Service). First find the Sources package page for the package that uses your tarball. If you do not already know this, perhaps you can search for it here: https://build.opensuse.org/search Once you have found the page for your package, you can click on "Sources". In my example, my package is libreoffice-converter, so I find this page: https://build.opensuse.org/package/files?package=libreoffice-converter&project=LibreOffice%3AUnstable You should find links for the various sources that go to make up the source rpm. And this should include the tarball. If you look at the source for that web page, it will include a link that looks like this: <a href="https://api.opensuse.org:443/public/source/LibreOffice:Unstable/libreoffice-converter/libreoffice- converter-3.3.tar.bz2?rev=2dffadb97b188c6bc4c0037f1d4c446d&amp;"> The \?rev=BLAH stuff needs to be thrown away. So you create a watch file that looks like this:

version=3

opts=filenamemangle=s/\?rev=.*// \ https://build.opensuse.org/package/files?package=libreoffice-converter&project=LibreOffice:Unstable \ https://api.opensuse.org:443/public/source/LibreOffice:Unstable/libreoffice-converter/libreoffice-converter-(\d\.\d)\.tar\.bz2\?rev=.*

The first line:

opts=filenamemangle=s/\?rev=.*// \

Says we are going to throw away the ?rev= stuff. The second line is the package source page that we found:

https://build.opensuse.org/package/files?package=libreoffice-converter&project=LibreOffice:Unstable \

The third line is the link target:

https://api.opensuse.org:443/public/source/LibreOffice:Unstable/libreoffice-converter/libreoffice-converter-(\d\.\d)\.tar\.bz2\?rev=.*

The version part 3.3, has been written as (\d\.\d) so uscan can abstract the version numbers. And it includes the part that will be thrown away "\?rev=.*". Thanks to David Paleino for helping me with this. -- Paul Elliott 1(512)837-1096 pelliott@BlackPatchPanel.com PMB 181, 11900 Metric Blvd Suite J http://www.free.blackpatchpanel.com/pme/ Austin TX 78758-3117