Build System

The build system downloads and creates several files that you may want to know about. There are also several make commands mentioned below, and a few extras that you may find useful. Here's a quick summary. All file paths are relative to your redox base directory.

• Build System Organization
  • Root Folder
  • GNU Make Configuration
  • Podman Configuration
  • Filesystem Configuration
  • Cookbook
  • Build System Files
• GNU Make Commands
  • Build System
  • Recipes
  • QEMU/VirtualBox
• Environment Variables
• Scripts
• Component Separation
• Crates
  • Current projects with crates
  • Manual patching
• Pinned commits
  • Current pinned submodules
  • Manual submodule update
• Git auto-checkout
  • Submodules
• Update The Build System
• Update relibc
  • All recipes
  • One recipe
• Configuration
  • Format
  • Filesystem Customization
• Cross-Compilation
• Build Phases

Build System Organization

Root Folder

• Makefile - The main Makefile of the build system, it loads all the other Makefiles.
• .config - Where you override your build system settings. It is loaded by the Makefile (it is ignored by git).

GNU Make Configuration

• mk/config.mk - The build system settings are here. You can override these settings in your .config, don't change them here to avoid conflicts in make pull.
• mk/*.mk - The rest of the Makefiles. You should not need to change them.

Podman Configuration

• podman/redox-base-containerfile - The file used to create the image used by the Podman build. The installation of Ubuntu packages needed for the build is done here. See Adding Ubuntu Packages to the Build if you need to add additional Ubuntu packages.

Filesystem Configuration

• config - This folder contains all filesystem configurations.
• config/*.toml - Filesystem templates used by the CPU target configurations (a template can use other template to reduce duplication)
• config/your-cpu-arch/your-config.toml - The filesystem configuration of the QEMU image to be built, e.g. config/x86_64/desktop.toml.
• config/your-cpu-arch/server.toml - The server variant with system components only (try this config if you have boot problems on QEMU or real hardware).
• config/your-cpu-arch/desktop.toml - The desktop variant with system components and the Orbital desktop environment (this is the default configuration of the build system).
• config/your-cpu-arch/demo.toml - The demo variant with optional programs and games.
• config/your-cpu-arch/ci.toml - The continuous integration configuration, recipes added here become packages on the build server.
• config/your-cpu-arch/dev.toml - The development variant with development tools included.
• config/your-cpu-arch/desktop-minimal.toml - The minimal desktop variant for low-end computers.
• config/your-cpu-arch/server-minimal.toml - The minimal server variant for low-end computers (without Orbital).
• config/your-cpu-arch/resist.toml - The build with the resist POSIX test suite.
• config/your-cpu-arch/acid.toml - The build with the acid general-purpose test suite.
• config/your-cpu-arch/jeremy.toml - The build of Jeremy Soller (creator/BDFL of Redox) with the recipes that he is testing in the moment.

Cookbook

• prefix/* - Tools used by the Cookbook system. They are normally downloaded during the first system build.

(If you are having a problem with the build system, you can remove the prefix directory and it will be recreated during the next build)

• cookbook/* - Part of the Cookbook system, these scripts and tools will build your recipes.
• cookbook/repo - Contains all packaged recipes.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name - A recipe (software port) directory (represented as recipe-name), this directory holds the recipe.toml file.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/recipe.toml - The recipe configuration file, this configuration contains instructions for downloading Git repositories or tarballs, then creating executables or other files to include in the Redox filesystem. Note that a recipe can contain dependencies that cause other recipes to be built, even if the dependencies are not otherwise part of your Redox build.

(To learn more about the recipe system read this page)

• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/recipe.sh - The old recipe configuration format (can't be used as dependency of a recipe with a TOML syntax).
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/source.tar - The tarball of the recipe (renamed).
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/source - The directory where the recipe source is extracted or downloaded.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target - The directory where the recipe binaries are stored.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET} - The directory for the recipes binaries of the CPU architecture (${TARGET} is the environment variable of your CPU architecture).
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/build - The directory where the recipe build system run its commands.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/stage - The directory where recipe binaries go before the packaging, after make all, make rebuild and make image the installer will extract the recipe package on the QEMU image, generally at /usr/bin or /usr/lib in a Redox filesystem hierarchy.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/sysroot - The folder where recipe build dependencies (libraries) goes, for example: library-name/src/example.c
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/stage.pkgar - Redox package file.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/stage.sig - Signature for the tar package format.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/stage.tar.gz - Legacy tar package format, produced for compatibility reasons as we are working to make the package manager use the pkgar format.
• cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target/${TARGET}/stage.toml - Contains the runtime dependencies of the package and is part of both package formats.

Build System Files

• build - The directory where the build system will place the final image. Usually build/$(ARCH)/$(CONFIG_NAME), e.g. build/x86_64/desktop.
• build/your-cpu-arch/your-config/harddrive.img - The Redox image file, to be used by QEMU or VirtualBox for virtual machine execution on a Unix-like host.
• build/your-cpu-arch/your-config/livedisk.iso - The Redox bootable image file, to be used on real hardware for testing and possible installation.
• build/your-cpu-arch/your-config/fetch.tag - An empty file that, if present, tells the build system that the downloading of recipe sources is done.
• build/your-cpu-arch/your-config/repo.tag - An empty file that, if present, tells the build system that all recipes required for the Redox image have been successfully built. The build system will not check for changes to your code when this file is present. Use make rebuild to force the build system to check for changes.
• build/podman - The directory where Podman Build places the container user's home directory, including the container's Rust installation. Use make container_clean to remove it. In some situations, you may need to remove this directory manually, possibly with root privileges.
• build/container.tag - An empty file, created during the first Podman build, so a Podman build knows when a reusable Podman image is available. Use make container_clean to force a rebuild of the Podman image on your next make rebuild.

GNU Make Commands

You can combine make commands, but order is significant. For example, make r.games image will build the games recipe and create a new Redox image, but make image r.games will make the Redox image before the recipe building, thus the new recipe binary will not be included on your Redox filesystem.

Build System

• make pull - Update the source code of the build system without building.
• make all - Builds the entire system, checking for changes and only building as required. Only use this for the first build. If the system was successfully built previously, this command may report Nothing to be done for 'all', even if some recipes have changed. Use make rebuild instead.
• make rebuild - Update all binaries from recipes with source code changes (it don't detect changes on the Redox toolchain), it should be your normal make target.
• make prefix - Download the Rust/GCC forks and build relibc (it update the relibc binary with source code changes after the make pull, touch relibc and make prefix commands).
• make fstools - Build the image builder (installer), Cookbook and RedoxFS (after touch installer or touch redoxfs).
• make fstools_clean - Clean the image builder, Cookbook and RedoxFS binaries.
• make fetch - Update recipe sources, according to each recipe, without building them. Only the recipes that are included in your (CONFIG_NAME).toml are downloaded. Does nothing if $(BUILD)/fetch.tag is present. You won't need this.
• make clean - Clean all recipe binaries (Note that make clean may require some tools to be built).
• make unfetch - Clean all recipe sources.
• make distclean - Clean all recipe sources and binaries.
• make repo - Package the recipe binaries, according to each recipe. Does nothing if $(BUILD)/repo.tag is present. You won't need this.
• make live - Creates a bootable image, build/livedisk.iso. Recipes are not usually rebuilt.
• make env - Creates a shell with the build environment initialized. If you are using Podman Build, the shell will be inside the container, and you can use it to debug build issues such as missing packages.
• make container_su - After creating a Podman container shell using make env, and while that shell is still running, use make container_su to enter the same container as root. See Debugging your Build Process.
• make container_clean - If you are using Podman Build, this will discard images and other files created by it.
• make container_touch - If you have removed the file build/container.tag, but the container image is still usable, this will recreate the container.tag file and avoid rebuilding the container image.
• make container_kill - If you have started a build using Podman Build, and you want to stop it, Ctrl-C may not be sufficient. Use this command to terminate the most recently created container.

Recipes

• make f.recipe-name - Download the recipe source.

• make r.recipe-name - Build a single recipe, checking if the recipe source has changed, and creating the executable, etc. e.g. make r.games.

  The package is built even if it is not in your filesystem configuration.

  (This command will continue where you stopped the build process, it's useful to save time if you had a compilation error and patched a crate)

• make c.recipe-name - Clean the recipe binaries.

• make u.recipe-name - Clean the recipe source code.

• make cr.recipe-name - A shortcut for make c.recipe r.recipe.

• make ucr.recipe-name - A shortcut for make u.recipe c.recipe r.recipe.

QEMU/VirtualBox

• make qemu - If a build/harddrive.img file exists, QEMU will run using that image. If you want to force a rebuild first, use make rebuild qemu. Sometimes make qemu will detect changes and rebuild, but this is not typical. If you are interested in a particular combination of QEMU command line options, have a look through mk/qemu.mk.
• make qemu vga=no - Start QEMU without a GUI (Orbital is disabled).
• make qemu vga=virtio - Start QEMU with the VirtIO GPU driver (2D acceleration).
• make qemu kvm=no - Start QEMU without the Linux KVM acceleration.
• make qemu iommu=no - Start QEMU without IOMMU.
• make qemu audio=no - Disable all sound drivers.
• make qemu usb=no - Disable all USB drivers.
• make qemu efi=yes - Enable the UEFI boot loader (it supports more screen resolutions).
• make qemu live=yes - Start a live disk (loads the entire image into RAM).
• make qemu vga=no kvm=no - Cumulative QEMU options is supported.
• make qemu_nvme - Boot Redox from a NVMe interface (SSD emulation).
• make image - Builds a new QEMU image, build/harddrive.img, without checking if any recipes have changed. It can save you some time if you are just updating one recipe with make r.recipe-name.
• make gdb - Connects gdb to the Redox image in QEMU. Join us on chat if you want to use this.
• make mount - Mounts the Redox image as a filesystem at $(BUILD)/filesystem. Do not use this if QEMU is running, and remember to use make unmount as soon as you are done. This is not recommended, but if you need to get a large file onto or off of your Redox image, this is available as a workaround.
• make unmount - Unmounts the Redox image filesystem. Use this as soon as you are done with make mount, and do not start QEMU until this is done.
• make virtualbox - The same as make qemu, but for VirtualBox.

Environment Variables

• $(BUILD) - Represents the build folder.
• $(ARCH) - Represents the CPU architecture folder at build.
• ${TARGET} - Represents the CPU architecture folder at cookbook/recipes/recipe-name/target.
• $(CONFIG_NAME) - Represents your filesystem configuration folder at build/your-cpu-arch.

We recommend that you use these variables with the " symbol to clean any spaces on the path, spaces are interpreted as command separators and will break the commands.

Example:

"${VARIABLE_NAME}"

If you have a folder inside the variable folder you can call it with:

"${VARIABLE_NAME}"/folder-name

Or

"${VARIABLE_NAME}/folder-name"

Scripts

You can use these scripts to perform actions not implemented as make commands in the build system.

• scripts/changelog.sh - Show the changelog of all Redox components.
• scripts/find-recipe.sh - Show all files installed by a recipe.

scripts/find-recipe.sh recipe-name

• scripts/category.sh - Run make options on some recipe category.

scripts/category.sh -x category-name

Where x is your make option, it can be f, r, c, u, cr, ucr, uc or ucf.

• scripts/include-recipes.sh - Create a list with recipe-name = {} #TODO for quick testing of WIP recipes.

scripts/include-recipes.sh "TODO.text"

You will insert the text after the #TODO in the text part, it can be found on the recipe.toml file of the recipe.

• scripts/show-package.sh - Show the folders and files on the stage and sysroot folders of some recipe (to identify packaging issues or violations).

scripts/show-package.sh recipe-name

• scripts/commit-hash.sh - Show the current Git branch and commit of the recipe source.

scripts/commit-hash.sh recipe-name

• scripts/pkg-size.sh - Show the package size of the recipes (stage.pkgar and stage.tar.gz), it must be used by package maintainers to enforce the library linking size policy.

scripts/pkg-size.sh recipe-name

• scripts/dual-boot.sh - Install Redox in the free space of your storage device and add a boot entry (if you are using the systemd-boot boot loader).
• scripts/ventoy.sh - Create and copy the Redox bootable image to an Ventoy-formatted device.
• scripts/backtrace.sh - Allow the user to copy a Rust backtrace from Redox and retrieve the symbols (use the -h option to show the "Usage" message).

Component Separation

• relibc - The cross-compiled recipes will link to the relibc of this folder (build system submodule)
• redoxfs - The FUSE driver of RedoxFS (build system submodule, to run on Linux)
• cookbook/recipes/relibc - The relibc recipe to be installed inside of Redox for static or dynamic linking of binaries (for native compilation)
• cookbook/recipes/redoxfs - The RedoxFS user-space daemon that run inside of Redox (recipe)

Crates

Some Redox projects have crates on crates.io, thus they use a version-based development, if some change is sent to their repository they need to release a new version on crates.io, it will have some delay.

Current projects with crates

• libredox
• redox_syscall
• redox-path
• redox-scheme
• redoxfs
• redoxer
• redox_installer
• redox-kprofiling
• redox-users
• redox-buffer-pool
• redox_log
• redox_termios
• redox-daemon
• redox_event
• redox_event_update
• redox_pkgutils
• redox_uefi
• redox_uefi_alloc
• redox_dmi
• redox_hwio
• redox_intelflash
• redox_liner
• redox_simple_endian
• redox_uefi_std
• ralloc
• orbclient
• orbclient_window_shortcuts
• orbfont
• orbimage
• orbterm
• orbutils
• slint_orbclient
• ralloc_shim
• ransid
• gitrepoman
• pkgar
• pkgar-core
• pkgar-repo
• termion
• reagent
• gdb-protocol
• orbtk
• orbtk_orbclient
• orbtk-render
• orbtk-shell
• orbtk-tinyskia

Manual patching

If you don't want to wait a new release on crates.io, you can patch the crate temporarily by fetching the version you need from GitLab and changing the crate version in Cargo.toml to crate-name = { path = "path/to/crate" }.

Pinned commits

The build system pin the last working commit of the submodules, if some submodule is broken because of some commit, the pinned commit avoid the fetch of this broken commit, thus pinned commits increase the development stability (broken changes aren't passed for developers and testers).

(When you run make pull the build system update the submodule folders based on the last pinned commit)

Current pinned submodules

• cookbook
• installer
• redoxfs
• relibc
• rust

Manual submodule update

Whenever a fix or new feature is merged on the submodules, the upstream build system must update the commit hash, to workaround this you can run git pull on the folder of the submodule directly, example:

make pull

cd submodule-folder-name

git checkout master

git pull

cd ..

Git auto-checkout

The make rebuild and make r.recipe commands will Git checkout (change the active branch) of the recipe source to master (only recipes that fetch Git repositories are affected, thus all Redox components).

If you are working in a separated branch on the recipe source you can't build your changes, to avoid this comment out the [source] and git = fields from your recipe.toml :

#[source]
#git = "some-repository-link"

Submodules

The make pull command will Git checkout the submodules active branches to master and pin a commit in HEAD, if you are working on the build system submodules don't run this command, to keep the build system using your changes.

To update the build system while you have out-of-tree changes in some submodule, run these commands:

• This command will only update the root build system files

git pull

• Now you need to manually update each submodule folder without your changes

cd submodule-name

git checkout master

git pull

cd ..

Update The Build System

This is the recommended way to update your build system/recipe sources and binaries.

make pull rebuild

(If the make pull command download new commits of the relibc submodule, you will need to run the commands of the Update relibc section)

Some new changes will require a complete rebuild (you will need to read the Dev room in our chat to know if some big MR was merged and run the make clean all command) or a new build system copy (run the bootstrap.sh script again or run the commands of this section), but the make pull rebuild command is enough for most cases.

Update relibc

An outdated relibc copy can contain bugs (already fixed on recent commits) or missing APIs, to update the relibc sources and build it, run:

make pull

touch relibc

make prefix

All recipes

To pass the new relibc changes for all recipes (programs are the most common case) you will need to rebuild all recipes, unfortunately it's not possible to use make rebuild because it can't detect the relibc changes to trigger a complete rebuild.

To clean all recipe binaries and trigger a complete rebuild, run:

make clean all

One recipe

To pass the new relibc changes to one recipe, run:

make cr.recipe-name

Configuration

You can find the global settings on this page.

Format

The Redox configuration files use the TOML format, it has a very easy syntax and is very flexbile.

You can see what TOML supports on this website.

Filesystem Customization

Read this section.

Cross-Compilation

The Redox build system is an example of cross-compilation. The Redox toolchain runs on Linux, and produces Redox executables. Anything that is installed with your package manager is just part of the toolchain and does not go on Redox.

In the background, the make all command downloads the Redox toolchain to build all recipes (patched forks of rustc, GCC and LLVM).

If you are using Podman, the podman_bootstrap.sh script will download an Ubuntu container and make all will install the Redox toolchain, all recipes will be compiled in the container.

The recipes produce Redox-specific executables. At the end of the build process, these executables are installed inside the QEMU image.

The relibc (Redox C Library) provides the Redox system calls to any software.

• OSDev article about cross-compilation

Build Phases

Every build system command/script has phases, read this page to know them.

• Build Phases