Building from Source

Overview

The build system of MistifyOS is based on a combination of the Buildroot Linux system creation software and a compilation environment provided by Crosstool-NG.

Using the Buildroot frameworks, we assemble a complete MistifyOS OS image from the source code of all its components, and provide the result in various formats - Initrd, ISO image, EXT2 image and so-on.

Requirements for building MistifyOS

To compile MistifyOS from source, the Buildroot-based environment requires the following to be installed. We recommend that a Ubuntu 14.04 environment be used.

OS Build Dependencies

The following Ubuntu 14.04 packages are required to operate the MistifyOS Buildroot environment:

• openssh-server
• git
• make
• gcc
• unzip
• bc
• mercurial
• gawk
• g++
• texinfo
• pv
• autoconf
• gperf
• flex
• libtool
• ncurses-dev
• subversion
• bison

Initiating a MistifyOS build

1. Use git to clone the mistify-os repository: git clone https://github.com/mistifyio/mistify-os.git

2. cd to the mistify-os checkout and run: ./buildmistify

At this point, the buildmistify script will begin cloning the various supporting sub-components (Crosstool-NG, the MistifyOS Buildroot fork, Go-lang), setting up the Buildroot environment, and begin the long compilation processes involved in generating an operating environment from scratch.

If the Crosstool-NG environment has not yet been compiled, buildmistify will do that. Any subsequent runs of buildmistify will reuse the compilation environment - it is meant to be "compile once, use many".