Build System

Build System is a set of Makefiles and utilities organized within one directory which is mounted into the source tree of the developed product.

The main purpose of the Build System is automating all stages of software solution development, from arrangement of source code from third-party developers usage to publication of own deliverable distributive.

The fundamental principle of Build System is described in the Build System Internals section and in the doc/PRINCIPLE* files of this repository.

Quick start
Documentation
Community
Creators

Quick start

All steps described below are considered in the Build System in Practice section on the main Radix.pro site. To create first package using Build System we have to perform following steps:

Install CCACHE
Getting Toolchains
Create a First Package

Install CCACHE

To speed up the building process we strongly recommend to set up CCACHE(1) utility. Almost all Linux distributions have this utility by default.

We described CCACHE setup process in the Build System Overview section and here we have to notice that the directory /opt/extra/ccache is a default place of the CCACHE data. If you want to use another directory for CCACHE data then you have to change the value of CACHED_CC_OUTPUT variable in the constants.mk file. Of course all developers should to have permissions to access this directory.

Before start the first build process you have to create CCACHE data directory on behalf of superuser:

$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/extra/ccache
$ sudo chown -R developer:developers /opt/extra

Where developers - is a name your developers group and developer - is a name of some user who is a member of developers group.

Getting Toolchains

First of all we have to create toolchains directory on the developer machine. The default path to toolchains is defined by TOOLCHAINS_BASE_PATH variable in the constants.mk file. The access permissions should be given to developers by the superuser:

$ sudo mkdir -p /opt/toolchain
$ sudo chown -R developer:developers /opt/toolchain

In principle no additional actions from the user is not required. The fact is that if before the start of assembly the first package the required toolchain will not be found in the appropriate directory then the build system will start downloading the needed toolchain from FTP-server and at the end of the downloading the build system unpacks the toolchain to the /opt/toolchain directory.

Also the toolchains installation can be done manualy. To do this you have to perform a set of commands like following:

$ cd /opt/toolchain
$ wget ftp://ftp.radix.pro/toolchains/x86_64/1.7.0/arm-RK328X-linux-glibc-1.7.0.tar.gz
$ tar xzf arm-RK328X-linux-glibc-1.7.0.tar.gz

for each needed toolchain.

First Package

Consider the work of the build system on the simplest example which despite its simplicity allow us to explore all of main stages of creating distributable packages.

Let us create a project directory:

$ mkdir project
$ cd project

Clone the build system repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/radix-platform/build-system.git

At this stage we do not want to create a new package from scratch and consider a complete package from Radix cross Linux repository. Let it be pkgtools. The pkgtools - is a base package which does not require the downloading any sources as they already present in the build system. In addition, pkgtools does not depend on any packages in the system and we already have all needed tools presented on the developer's machine.

So, to obtain the necessary files we have to check out /base directory from repository:

$ svn co svn://svn.radix.pro/radix/system/trunk/base base

Let's change current directory to base/pkgtool:

$ cd base/pkgtool

and create our first package:

$ HARDWARE=ffrk3288 make

At the end of build process the build system displays a message indicating that the pkgtool package has been successfully installed into dist/rootfs/rk328x-glibc/ffrk3288 directory which created especially as the working image of the target root file system:

Package creation complete.

#######
####### Install packages into 'dist/rootfs/rk328x-glibc/ffrk3288/...' file system...
#######

 Installing package pkgtool... 
|======================================================================|

 pkgtool 1.1.0 (Package Tools)
 
 This is a set of scripts used for package creation, install, etc.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Uncompressed Size: 168K
   Compressed Sise: 24K
|======================================================================|

make[2]: Leaving directory `project/base/pkgtool'
make[1]: Leaving directory `project/base/pkgtool'
$

This process considered in more details in the Build System in Practice section at the main Radix.pro site.

Documentation

Build System's documentation is present on the main Radix.pro site in the Build System section.

Community

Get updates on Build System's development and chat with the project maintainers and community members.

Read and subscribe to The Official Radix.pro Blog.
Follow Radix cross Linux on VKontakte.

Versioning

For transparency into our release cycle and in striving to maintain backward compatibility, Build System is maintained under the Semantic Versioning guidelines excluding additional labels such as pre-release suffixes.

See the Versioning section on the main Radix.pro site.

Release announcement posts will be available on the Official Radix.pro Blog and on the Community sites.

Radix cross Linux Build System