ostree/README.md
Colin Walters cd6eac2ce9 README: Attempt to flesh out more, start moving docs from wiki
I'd like to migrate content from the GNOME wiki, as frankly the wiki
is crap.  Markdown in git is better in every way.

Start by fleshing out the README.md to be more useful.
2015-07-28 18:39:43 -04:00

2.4 KiB

OSTree

OSTree is a tool that combines a "git-like" model for committing and downloading bootable filesystem trees, along with a layer for deploying them and managing the bootloader configuration.

Traditional package managers (dpkg/rpm) build filesystem trees on the client side. In contrast, the primary focus of OSTree is on replicating trees composed on a server.

Features:

  • Atomic upgrades and rollback
  • GPG signatures and "pinned TLS" support
  • Support for parallel installing more than just 2 bootable roots
  • Binary history on the server side
  • Introspectable shared library API for build and deployment systems

Projects using OSTree

rpm-ostree is a tool that uses OSTree as a shared library, and supports committing RPMs into an OSTree repository, and deploying them on the client.

Project Atomic uses rpm-ostree to provide a minimal host for Docker formatted Linux containers.

xdg-app uses OSTree for desktop application containers.

GNOME Continuous is a custom build system designed for OSTree, using OpenEmbedded in concert with a custom build system to do continuous delivery from hundreds of git repositories.

Building

Releases are available as GPG signed git tags, and most recent versions support extended validation using git-evtag.

However, in order to build from a git clone, you must update the submodules. If you're packaging OSTree and want a tarball, I recommend using a "recursive git archive" script. There are several available online; this code in OSTree is an example.

Once you have a git clone or recursive archive, building is the same as almost every autotools project:

env NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=...
make
make install DESTDIR=/path/to/dest

More documentation

Some more information is available on the old wiki page: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/OSTree

The intent is for that wiki page content to be migrated into Markdown in this git repository.

Contributing

See Contributing.