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Building Bluefin

Bluefin is cloud native, so all all the tooling can be run locally or on any server. Check out the Universal Blue Forge if you're interested in self-hosting. Just is used to manage build tasks. It is designed to facilitate local development. It is also useful for building Bluefin on a wider variety of CI/CD systems.

First clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/ublue-os/bluefin.git

The Justfile at the root of the repo is used to build the images and ISOs, here's some examples:

CommandDescription
just build bluefinDefaults to latest main
just build bluefin-dx gtsBuilds gts only Bluefin DX
just build bluefin-dx beta nvidiaBuilds beta nvidia version of Bluefin DX
just build bluefin stable nvidiaBuilds nvidia version of the Bluefin stable branch

The general pattern is just build/run image tag flavor

  • Images: bluefin,bluefin-dx
  • Tags: gts,stable,latest,beta
  • Flavors: main,nvidia,hwe,hwe-nvidia

Run the image and open a shell:​

just run bluefin stable

Build an ISO:​

just build-iso bluefin stable

Run an ISO​

This command fires up a virtual machine and runs the image:

just run-iso bluefin stable

Tasks​

clean​

Cleans the repository by removing build directories and the previous.manifest.json file.

  • Uses find *_build* -exec rm -rf {} to remove directories and rm -f previous.manifest.json to delete the manifest file.

sudo-clean​

Performs the same cleaning operations as clean but with elevated privileges using the sudoif function.

validate​

Validates the combination of image, tag, and flavor provided as arguments.

  • Checks if the provided image, tag, and flavor exist in the predefined associative arrays.
  • Ensures that certain combinations (e.g., gts tag with aurora image) are not allowed.

sudoif​

A helper function to execute commands with elevated privileges if necessary.

  • Uses sudo with --askpass if available, or directly if the user has root privileges.

build​

Builds an image with specified parameters (image, tag, flavor, and rechunk).

  • Validates the input parameters, determines the image name, base image, target, Fedora version, and kernel release.
  • Uses podman build to create the container image with appropriate build arguments and labels.
  • Optionally calls the rechunk task if the rechunk parameter is set to 1.

build-rechunk​

A convenience task that calls the build task with the rechunk parameter set to 1.

rechunk​

Rechunks an image to optimize its storage.

  • Ensures the image is already built and available in the local Podman store.
  • Uses a series of podman commands to prune, create, and chunk the image.
  • Updates permissions and cleans up temporary files and volumes.

run​

Runs a container from the built image.

  • Validates the input parameters and ensures the image is built if not already available.
  • Uses podman run to start the container interactively.

build-iso​

Builds an ISO image from the container image.

  • Validates the input parameters and determines the appropriate image name.
  • Can pull the image from GHCR or use a locally built image.
  • Generates a list of flatpaks to be included and creates the ISO using podman run with appropriate arguments.

build-iso-ghcr​

A convenience task that calls the build-iso task with the ghcr parameter set to 1.

run-iso​

Runs an ISO image in a virtualized environment.

  • Validates the input parameters and ensures the ISO is built if not already available.
  • Determines an available port and uses podman run to start the virtualized environment with the ISO.

changelogs​

Tests changelogs for a specified branch.

  • Uses a Python script to generate changelogs and outputs the results to specified files.