gnuboot/site/docs/build/index.md

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title: Build GNU Boot binaries x-reviewed: true ...

This guide documents how to compile GNU Boot binaries from the available source code.

At the time of writing users wanting to build binaries need to download the [https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuboot.git/ GNU Boot source code] with git.

Supported distributions for building GNU Boot binaries:

GNU Boot is currently based on the latest version of Libreboot that doesn't ship nonfree software, and it also uses an older version of Coreboot to support certain computers that are not supported anymore in Coreboot. Because of that the versions of various software that GNU Boot builds are old and cannot be built anymore on recent distributions.

While there is work to fix that by both updating that software to more recent versions and to also also allow to build older versions on newer distributions, in the meantime we need to workaround this issue by using specific distributions to build GNU Boot.

People managed to build GNU Boot with the following distributions:

• PureOS 10 (byzantium)

• Trisquel 10 (nabia)

And these cannot build GNU Boot yet:

• Trisquel 11 (aramo): The issue is documented in the Bug #64870.

• Guix: Guix doesn't have any ADA compiler and that is needed for building Coreboot for certain computers.

Git

GNU Boot build system still has some fragile scripts for building some of the projects like Coreboot.

Because of that you need to configure git even if you only want to build build a binary without modifying anything because the GNU Boot build system uses git directly when applying patches to the software it builds, and git expects some configuration to be present when applying patches.

To fix that you need to set a valid username and email: git config --global user.name "John Doe" git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Change the name and email address to whatever you want, when doing this.

You may also want to follow more of the steps here: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-First-Time-Git-Setup

Building GNU Boot binaries

GNU Boot includes a file called Makefile that you can use . This Makefile calls some scripts like download or build that are in the same directory, that you can also also use directly if you want.

The Makefile is much more simple to use but offers less flexibility (for instance there is a single command to build all images but no way to build an image for a specific computer).

To build GNU Boot you must first ensure that all build dependencies are installed.

If you are running Trisquel 10 (nabia) you can run the following command as it takes care of installing all the required dependencies for you:

sudo make install-dependencies-ubuntu

If instead you use PureOS 10 (byzantium) you can use the following command instead:

sudo make install-dependencies-debian

When this is done you can build all the GNU Boot images with the following command (this uses the Makefile):

make

This single command will build ROM images for every computer supported by GNU Boot. If you only wish to build a limited set, you can use the build script directly:

./build boot roms x200_8mb

You can specify more than one argument:

./build boot roms x200_8mb x60

ROM images appear under the newly created bin/ directory in the build system.

For other commands, simply read the Makefile in your favourite text editor. The Makefile is simple, because each commands run a simple script, so it's very easy to know what commands are available by simply reading it.

Standard clean command available (cleans all modules except crossgcc):

make clean

To clean your crossgcc builds:

make crossgcc-clean

To build release archives:

make release

Build without using GNU Make

The Makefile is included just for compatibility, so that someone who instictively types make will get a result.

Actual development/testing is always done using the build, download, update or modify scripts directly, and this includes when building from source. Here are some instructions to get you started:

First, install build dependencies

GNU Boot includes a script that automatically installs dependencies in Trisquel 10 (nabia):

sudo ./build dependencies ubuntu2004

and for PureOS 10 (byzantium):

sudo ./build dependencies debian

The build script automatically runs all necessary commands; for example ./build payload grub will automatically run ./build module grub if the required utilities for GRUB are not built, to produce payloads.

As a result, you can now (after installing the correct build dependencies) run just a single command, from a fresh Git clone, to build the ROM images:

./build boot roms

or even just build specific ROM images, e.g.:

./build boot roms x60

If you wish to build payloads, you can also do that. For example:

./build payload grub

./build payload seabios

Previous steps will be performed automatically. However, you can still run individual parts of the build system manually, if you choose. This may be beneficial when you're making changes, and you wish to test a specific part of GNU Boot.

Therefore, if you only want to build ROM images, just do the above. Otherwise, please continue reading!

Second, download all of the required software components

If you didn't simply run ./build boot roms (with or without extra arguments), you can still perform the rest of the build process manually.

It's as simple as that:

./download all

The above command downloads all modules defined in the GNU Boot build system. However, you can download modules individually.

This command shows you the list of available modules:

./download list

Example of downloading an individual module:

./download coreboot

./download seabios

./download grub

./download flashrom

Third, build all of the modules:

Building a module means that it needs to have already been downloaded. Currently, the build system does not automatically do pre-requisite steps such as this, so you must verify this yourself.

Again, very simple:

./build module all

This builds every module defined in the Libreboot build system, but you can build modules individually.

The following command lists available modules:

./build module list

Example of building specific modules:

./build module grub

./build module seabios

./build module flashrom

Commands are available to clean a module, which basically runs make-clean. You can list these commands:

./build clean list

Clean all modules like so:

./build clean all

Example of cleaning specific modules:

./build clean grub

./build clean cbutils

Fourth, build all of the payloads:

Very straight forward:

./build payload all

You can list available payloads like so:

./build payload list

Example of building specific payloads:

./build payload grub

./build payload seabios

The build-payload command is is a prerequsite for building ROM images.

Fifth, build the ROMs!

Run this command:

./build boot roms

Each board has its own configuration under resources/coreboot/ which specifies which payloads are supported.

By default, all ROM images are built, for all boards. If you wish to build just a specific board, you can specify the board name based on the directory name for it under resources/coreboot/. For example:

./build boot roms x60

Board names, like above, are the same as the directory names for each board, under resources/coreboot/ in the build system.

That's it!

If all went well, ROM images should be available to you under bin/

See also:

If you want to contribute to the website instead, see the website-build/README in the source code of GNU Boot.