Launchpad Help > Packaging > Prioritising builds

Prioritising builds

When you upload a source package to Launchpad, it assigns the package a priority -- a "score" -- and then uses that score to decide when the package should be sent to Launchpad's build-farm.

Launchpad calculates the score based on various attributes (described below). The higher the score, the sooner the build is dispatched to one of the available build machines.

There are separate build queues for distributions and PPAs (PPA → View package details → View all builds).

How Launchpad calculates the score

Launchpad uses the following attributes of a package to calculate its priority:

• target pocket -- e.g. security

• target component -- e.g. universe

• source urgency -- defined by the packager
• package sets containing the package
• archive containing the package

Launchpad adds up the scores from each category to decide the build's priority.

Target pocket

Target component

Source urgency

A packager can specify the urgency of their source package. Launchpad takes this into account.

Package sets

Package sets are used in distributions to apply properties such as upload permissions to groups of packages. A package set may have a "relative build score" bonus assigned to it in the Launchpad database, and a package receives the maximum of the bonuses for any of the package sets that contain it. These bonuses don't apply to PPA builds. Currently, package sets in the Ubuntu distribution that are used to build images receive bonuses as follows:

Archives

Builds destined for private PPAs are given a higher priority.

Builds destined for copy archives (used for test rebuilds of the Ubuntu primary archive) are given a lower priority.

Archives may also have a "relative build score" bonus assigned to them in the Launchpad database.

Other

Builds for sources targeted to the translations section don't get any package bonuses, meaning they will be scored at the base score for the archive and processed after all other builds for that archive.