This repository contains the scripts used for building LessLinux. They are not complete yet since I am cleaning up during the move from subversion to git. See the documentation on http://blog.lesslinux.org/ for details.

Today's state - updated 2017-06-29

Legacy: Red Build with --legacy - this uses headers and kernels from the 3.18.x LTS series. Not as extensively tested as stable. Do not use anymore.

Stable: Green Build with neither --legacy nor --unstable. Works quite good, need some fine tuning. Has been updated to kernel 4.4.x, but kernel configuration might receive some fine tuning. Still issues with some games that use cogl and clutter. Some packages may fail, since they rely on now obsolete (first stage) cross compilers, either take those cross compilers from bitrot or build with --allow-fail=grub-efi-i386,grub-efi-image-i386,grub-efi-amd64,grub-efi-image

Unstable: Yellow Build with --unstable. USE ON YOUR OWN RISK. Currenty we are updating to kernel 4.9, GCC 6.3. Network management for release builds is now handled by connman. Language packs for Firefox are missing. Some packages may fail to build. Works mostly, but still needs some testing.

Check out a revision before June 6th, 2017 to access stable with 4.1 kernel.

Checking out

Checking out under older LessLinux Jabba Builds may fail due to missing certificates, use the command:

git -c http.sslVerify=false clone https://github.com/mschlenker/lesslinux-builder

Building the Toolchain

Scripts for the toolchain reside in stage01. This basically builds cross compile tools that are native to the host architecture. It is later used to chroot to. For details read http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/development/chapter05/introduction.html.

To build, simply run:

ruby -I. builder.rb -n -l -s 2,3

This skips the second and third stage, logs and runs no tests. If you want to build the unstable tree, use:

ruby -I. builder.rb -n -l -s 2,3 -u

To determine if you have to use unstable or not to build as close as possible certain release, take a look at the files /etc/lesslinux/updater/version.git and /etc/lesslinux/updater/command.sh. The first file contains the git SHA1 sum that identifies a certain revision und the second contains the stage 3 command.

Building packages in chroot

Now packages in the chroot have to be build. LessLinux supports parallel builds (-t) and dependency tracking using strace. If you are not adding new packages, turn it off.

To build, simply run:

ruby -I. builder.rb -n -l -s 1,3 -t 3 --no-stracalyze

or (for the unstable tree)

ruby -I. builder.rb -n -l -s 1,3 -t 3 --no-stracalyze --unstable

Building the final ISO image

To build the ISO you have to specify some config paths - you might use modified versions of those config files outside the LessLinux tree - copy the command from /etc/lesslinux/updater/command.sh mentioned above:

ruby -I. builder.rb -n -s 1,2,bootconf \
  -p config/pkglist_neutral_rescue_GTK3_unstable.txt \
  --skip-files config/skiplist_neutral_rescue.txt \
  -c config/general_neutral_rescue.xml \
  -b config/branding_neutral_rescue.xml \
  -k config/kernels_rescue_unstable.xml --unstable