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For Developers

Greetings, fellow devel! 🖖🏽

dyne:bolic welcomes contributions, big and small. You are here by invited to clone the repository localy and get yourself an account on the Devuan Gitea. For your convenience the repository is mirrored on GitHub. However, due to the ownership model of GitHub we encourage you to stick to the Devuan Gitea. From the Gitea interface you will be able to fork the repository and send Pull Requests. But you are welcome to ask for write permission in the bridged chat.

Source code

https://git.devuan.org/jaromil/dynebolic

Come talk to us

These channels are all bridge, meaning it doesn't matter whether you are using one or the other, you will be able to communicate with everyone.

The dyne:bolic SDK

dyne:bolic Modules

System Development

Developing For The Desktop

The dyne:bolic SDK offers various workflows. To get the full list of targets, cd into your cloned repository and run make. This will present you with a list of Make targets that will help you contribute to the project.

Getting dyne:bolic development up and running

The two workflows Desktop devleopers are interested in are "Quick start":

 ----             __ Quick start:
 deps             🛠 Install development dependencies
 setup            📥 Download the latest development ROOT modules
 system           🗿 Build the root system: dyneIV-root
 iso              🏁 Create the current ISO image
 qemu             🖥 Emulate UEFI USB boot using qemu
 burn             🔥 Write the ISO to a removable USB=/dev/sd?

and "Snapshot testing"

 -----            __ Snapshot testing functions:
 snap-iso         🧨 Test a squashed snapshot as ISO FILE=path
 snap-mount       👀 Explore the contents of a snapshot FILE=path
 snap-umount      🔌 Stop exploring and unplug the snapshot
 test-changes     🍳 Test current changes in home and static

Most of these make commands need to be run as root. This can be achieved in different ways depending on your operating system.

To bootstrap your Desktop development environement, follow this sequence:

  1. make deps (requires root)
  2. make setup (requires root)
  3. make system (requires root)
  4. make iso (requires root)

Each command will take a moment to complete and be quite verbose. Don't fear it. It might look scary, but your computer is talking to you, so listen!

Once you have ran all of the four commands, there will be a new file in your local repository called dynebolic.iso. This is an image of the dyne:bolic install disk.

You can now test it by running:

  1. make qemu

This will start a virtual environement in which dyne:bolic will boot. If everything was made correctly, you will see the grub menu. Pick the first entry.

Image title
grub menu

Soon see the desktop appear. Once it does, you can proceed and make changes to the desktop and then export them. Even though it is slightly more time consuming, it is advisable to make one change and export at the time.

Export changes

Once you have made the desired changes, from within the virutal d:b dekstop, start a terminal and become root. To do this type: su. The system will ask you for a password. The password is dyne. It will look like this:

dyne@dynebolic ~ ❯ su
Password:
root@dynebolic:/home/dyne#

The user changed to root, and you may now export your changes. To do this, type:

dyne-snapshot

Accept the identity of the remote server, by typing yes and hitting enter.

This will fetch any modified file, package them into a single file and upload them to the snapshot server. You will be presented with a URL. Using this method, you won't be able to copy it from your virtual machine to your machine. To fetch this snapshot, either use the QR code with your phone to transfer it to yourself. Or head over to the snapshot server and sort the files by "Last Modified".

Inspecting changes to commit them.

Terminate the virutal machine for now. To inspect your snapshot, download your snapshot to the root of your cloned repository and mount it.

  • sudo su (become root)
  • make snap-mount FILE=/path/to/your-snapshot-file

This will create a folder in the root of your cloned repository called "snap-mount" containing all the modified files. Navigate into it and run ncdu.

cd snap-mount
ncdu

This will show you a browser like view where you can browse through the modified files. To close it, hit the "Q" key on your keyboard

Still as root, copy the files you are interested in to a different folder:

  • mkdir ../snap-export create folder.
  • cp -ra . ../snap-export copy all files recursively
  • chown -R 1000:1000 ../snap-export transfer ownership of the copied file to your own user.
  • make snap-umount unmount the snapshot from the file system ⚠️

In the root of your cloned repository, there is a folder called static. This is where the configuration files for the desktop and system are residing. Copy over the files to this folder following the same structure. If your file is snap-export/home/dyne/.config/my-amazing-settings.conf, move it to static/home/dyne/.config/my-amazing-settings.conf

Once you have done this, you need to make sure that your changes are going to give the desired effect. This because, maybe you forgot something? Maybe there are more files responsible for the changes you want?

  • make test-changes

This will launch a virtual machine taking into account your changes. When the desktop appears, you should be able to see your changes. If you do, commit them to the repository:

  • git add path/to/changed.file
  • git commit -m "write a description of your changes in present tense here"
  • git push

Appendices

Appendix I: A Brief History of dyne:bolic

  • Context (technological, social, political) of first release of dyne:bolic
  • Evolution of dyne:bolic
  • dyne:bolic now.

The first edition of dyne:bolic was released