Setting up the build environment on HDD

From Alpine Linux

An existing Alpine Linux installation running in System Disk mode i.e traditional or classic harddisk installation can be used as build environment. Alternates are to setup a clean Alpine Linux build environment in a chroot inside another system, or some form of virtualization. The host system may also be Alpine Linux, or may be something else.

Note: For a build environment, it is recommended to use edge version.

Upgrade to edge

An upgrade of Alpine Linux from a stable version to the rolling development version edge basically requires the same steps as Upgrading to latest release.

There are only two differences:-

  • When editing the /etc/apk/repositories file, all referenced repository versions (such as v3.22 or latest-stable) therein need to be pointing to edge as follows.

    Contents of /etc/apk/repositories

    #/media/cdrom/apks http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community @testing http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing
  • When the upgrade completes, edge currently issues an encouragement to run a "/usr merge" script that would update the base filesystem hierarchy:
usr_merge_nag.sh: 
* WARNING: The current system is not /usr-merged. You are encouraged to
* migrate manually to ensure the best-possible support. See
* https://alpinelinux.org/posts/2025-10-01-usr-merge.html for more details
Applying this change should not affect general users. For background information on this process, consult the news release, including its listing of the types of installations that may be affected.
This update is not currently a requirement but will be implemented in the future.
To attempt its implementation with a dry run first that should foresee errors in execution:
# As per a standard system upgrade to Edge or to a new release
doas apk upgrade -aU    

# Install the script
doas apk add merge-usr

# Simulate the outcome of the merge: do a "dry run".  This would report any errors onscreen
doas merge-usr --dryrun

# If any error is reported, it would be appreciated if you could kindly open an issue at https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/–/issues/new 

# WARNING: The next step would be to run the script, but it is only to be run as long as the steps above were performed without any errors
doas merge-usr

# The script would no longer be required and may now be deleted from the system
doas apk del merge-usr

# Remember to sync and reboot, as per usual after a system upgrade
doas sync
doas reboot

Setup your system and account

The alpine-sdk is a metapackage that pulls in the most essential packages used to build new packages. Also install and configure a way to elevate privileges, such as sudo or doas, and an editor, such as vi, nano, micro.

# apk add alpine-sdk

This would be a good time to create a normal user account for you to work in. To make life easier later, it's a good idea to add this user to the wheel group; operations that require superuser privileges can now be done with sudo or doas.

The aports tree is in git so before we clone it, let's configure git. Refer Development using git page for a quick reference.

Configure your global git config

Configure your name and email address in git. This name and email address will show up in all your commits:

$ git config --global user.name "Your Name" $ git config --global user.email "your@email.address"

Using git config without --global let you configure other details for a specific git repository.

For aports, configure git to use rebase instead of merge when you execute git pull:

$ git config pull.rebase true

Configure abuild

Abuild needs to be configured for both the system and user.

Edit the file /etc/abuild.conf as per requirements. Most of the defaults can be left alone, unless you are developing for a custom platform, in which case the comments in the file should guide you. The one field to edit is PACKAGER, so that you can get credit (or blame) for packages you create.

In order to use abuild command The user executing abuild must be a member of the abuild group:

# addgroup <yourusername> abuild

Note: Remember to logout and login again for the group change to have effect.

For abuild a public/private rsa key pair is needed. The abuild-keygen command from abuild package generates and configures the security keys.

$ abuild-keygen -a -i

Contribute

Proceed to create new package or create and submit patches for Alpine Linux.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/w/index.php?title=Setting_up_the_build_environment_on_HDD&oldid=30256"