VyOS toplevel build

For the most up-to-date documentation, please read the online build guide at docs.vyos.io.

What is VyOS

VyOS is an open source operating system for network devices (routers, firewalls and so on). If you want to use it in your network, check out download and installation instructions at https://docs.vyos.io/en/latest/installation/index.html

If you want to modify VyOS and/or join its development, read on.

About this repository

VyOS is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian. Just like any other distribution, it consists of multiple packages.

Some packages are taken from the upstream, while other are modified or written from scratch by VyOS developers. Every package maintained by the VyOS team has its own git repository. VyOS image build is therefore a multi-step process. Packages are compiled first, then an ISO is built from Debian packages and our own packages.

This is the top level repository that contains links to repositories with VyOS specific packages (organized as Git submodules) and scripts and data that are used for building those packages and the installation image.

Repository Structure

There are several directories with their own purpose:

build/ Used for temporary files used for the build and for build artifacts
data/ Data required for building the ISO (e.g. boot splash/configs)
packages/ This directory has two meanings. First it can hold arbitrary *.deb packages which will be embeded into the resulting ISO, but it also holds Jenkins Pipeline definitions for required VyOS packages. Among other things those packages will be: Linux Kernel, FRR, Netfiler...
scripts/ Scripts that are used for the build process
tools/ Scripts that are used for maintainer's tasks automation and other purposes, but not during ISO build process
vars/ Jenkins Pipeline library for reusable functions

Building VyOS

In order to have a single manual and not maintining multiple copies the instructions on how to build VyOS either in a Docker container or natively can be found in our Documentation - Build VyOS.

Development Branches

The default branch that contains the most recent VyOS code is called current rather than master. We know it's confusing, but it's not easy to fix. In a nutshell, the code we inherited from Vyatta Core had its master branch so out of sync with everything it was beyond any repair. Vyatta developers used to create a new branch not when a release is ready for code freeze, but rather before starting to work on a new release. This is hard to change in existing code, so this is just the way it is, for now.

All new code goes to the current branch. When it's time for a code freeze, a new branch is created for the release, and new code from current is backported to the release branch as needed.

In packages that originate from VyOS the master branch is kept in sync with current, but we still use current as default branch for uniformity. When the last legacy package is gone, we will switch to using the master branch and retire current.

Post-1.2.0 branches are named after constellations sorted by area from smallest to largest. There are 88 of them, here's the complete list.

VyOS 1.2: crux (Southern Cross)
VyOS 1.3: equuleus (Little Horse)
VyOS 1.4: sagitta (Arrow)
...