Workign with Package Repositories in OpenSuSe - zypper

Zypper is a command line tool for installing and updating packages. It is especially useful to accomplish remote software management tasks or to manage software from shell scripts.

To list all repositories known to the system, use the command: zypper repos
The result will look similar to the following output:

Adding Repositories:
To add a repository use command:  zypper addrepo URI Alias
URI can either be an Internet repository, a directory, or a CD or DVD. The Alias is a shorthand and unique identifier of the repository.

# zypper addrepo http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.1 vlc
Adding repository 'vlc' [done]
Repository 'vlc' successfully added
Enabled: Yes
Autorefresh: No
URI: http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/11.1

Removing Repositories:
Use following command to remove any repository

# zypper removerepo vlc
Removing repository 'vlc' [done]
Repository 'vlc' has been removed.

Modifying Repositories
To Enable repository use following command:

# zypper mr -d 15
Repository 'vlc' has been sucessfully disabled.

To Disable repository use following command:

# zypper mr -e 15
Repository 'vlc' has been sucessfully enabled.

Refreshing Repositories:
After adding of a repository or when a repository becomes out of date, it needs to be refreshed. This mean downloading package metadata from it and preprocessing the data into .solv cache for quick reading.

# zypper refresh
Retrieving repository 'KDE:KDE4:Community' metadata [done]
Building repository 'KDE:KDE4:Community' cache [done]
New repository or package signing key received:
Key ID: 27C070176F88BB2F
Key Name: KDE OBS Project
Key Fingerprint: 4E8E6DE2961F3083EAC5008627C070176F88BB2F
Repository: KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop