Build an ISO from the Source Code for Photon OS

1: Folder Layout
2: Build Prerequisites
3: Building the ISO
4: Use the Cached Toolchain and RPMS
5: Use Cached Sources
6: View Build Logs

You can build an ISO from the source code for Photon OS. This section describes how to build the ISO, use the cached toolchain and RPMS, and cached sources. You can use this method as an alternative to downloading a pre-built version.

For information on how to install and build a package on Photon OS from the package’s source RPM, see the Photon OS Administration Guide.

1 - Folder Layout

The structure of the directories on GitHub that contain the source code for Photon OS is as follows:

photon/
├── Makefile
├── README
├── Dockerfile
├── Vagrantfile
├── SPECS        # RPM SPEC files
├── common       # Build, packaging config
├── docs         # Documentation
├── installer    # Installer used at runtime
├── support      # Build scripts
└── tools

2 - Build Prerequisites

Before you build the ISO, verify that you have the performed the following tasks:

Installed a build operating system running the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 14.04 or later version.
Downloaded and installed the following packages: bison, gawk, g++, createrepo, python-aptdaemon, genisoimage, texinfo, python-requests, libfuse-dev, libssl-dev, uuid-dev, libreadline-dev, kpartx, git, bc
Installed Docker
Downloaded the source code from the Photon OS repository on GitHub into $HOME/workspaces/photon.

3 - Building the ISO

Perform the following steps to install the packages on Ubuntu:

Install the packages:

sudo apt-get -y install bison gawk g++ createrepo python-aptdaemon genisoimage texinfo python-requests libfuse-dev libssl-dev uuid-dev libreadline-dev kpartx git bc

Get Docker:
```
wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh
```
Install pip and docker 2.3.0
```
sudo apt install python3-pip
pip3 install docker==2.3.0
```
If you encounter an error for LOCALE when you run these commands, then export the following variables in the terminal:
```
export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
export LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
```
Make the ISO. The example below assumes that you checked out the workspace under $HOME/workspaces/photon:
```
cd $HOME/workspaces/photon
sudo make iso
```

Result

This command first builds all RPMs corresponding to the SPEC files in your Photon repository and then builds a bootable ISO containing those RPMs.

The RPMs thus built are stored under stage/RPMS/ directory within the repository, using the following directory hierarchy:

$HOME/workspaces/photon/stage/:
├──RPMS/:
    ├──noarch/*.noarch.rpm    [Architecture-independent RPMs]
    ├──x86_64/*.x86_64.rpm    [RPMs built for the x86-64 architecture]
    ├──aarch64/*.aarch64.rpm  [RPMs built for the aarch64 (ARM64) architecture]

The ISO is created at $HOME/workspaces/photon/stage/photon.iso.

4 - Use the Cached Toolchain and RPMS

When the necessary RPMs are available under the stage/RPMS/ directory, the commands that you use to create any Photon artifact such as, ISO or OVA will reuse those RPMs to create the specified image.

If you already have the Photon RPMs available elsewhere, and not under stage/RPMS/ in the Photon repository, you can build Photon artifacts using those cached RPMs by setting the PHOTON_CACHE_PATH variable to point to the directory containing those RPMs.

For example, if your RPMs are located under $HOME/photon-cache/, then use the following command to build an ISO:

sudo make iso PHOTON_CACHE_PATH=$HOME/photon-cache

The $HOME/photon-cache/ directory should follow the same structure as the stage/RPMS/ directory:

photon-cache/:
├──RPMS/:
    ├──noarch/*.noarch.rpm
    ├──x86_64/*.x86_64.rpm
    ├──aarch64/*.aarch64.rpm

5 - Use Cached Sources

To use the cached sources, run the following command:

mkdir $HOME/photon-sources
sudo make iso PHOTON_SOURCES_PATH=$HOME/photon-sources

The directory format of PHOTON_SOURCES_PATH is as follows:

photon-sources/
├──src1.tar.gz
├──src2.tar.gz
└──...

6 - View Build Logs

You can view package build logs and image build logs at the following location:

$HOME/workspaces/photon/stage/LOGS