/raspberry-make

command line tool (Makefile) to create custom Raspberry Pi images, based on Ansible and Docker

Primary LanguageMakefileMIT LicenseMIT

raspberry-make

raspberry-make is a command-line tool (Makefile) that can be used to build deterministic and ready-to-use OS images for the Raspberry Pi, defined by a set of configuration files. It is intended for creating images with pre-installed software and configuration, that can be deployed to headless computers, without the need for setup procedures or manual installations.

A provisioning-based approach, like the one made possible by this tool, leads to a decrease in deployment time, to a decrease in human-related errors, and allows to collect all the configuration files related to a specific machine in a single repository.

Features:

  • all build stages are cached and therefore reprocessed only if needed
  • compatible with multiple Linux distros, as it depends only on docker
  • building happens in an isolated docker container
  • building does not require root privileges, nor any additional capability

raspberry-make is implemented in the form of a Makefile, and makes use of Ansible, a common tool for configuring remote machines, that follows rules defined in YAML-formatted files.

Installation and usage

  1. Install dependencies:

    • docker (>= 18.09)
    • make
    • curl

  2. Download software and sample configuration:

    curl -L https://github.com/gswly/raspberry-make/tarball/master | tar zxvf - --strip-components=1
rm README.md LICENSE

  3. Edit config to suit your needs, edit 00base/playbook.yml, 01apt/playbook.yml, 02ssh/playbook.yml to suit your needs. These files are Ansible playbooks, whose format is documented here. It is possible to create as many folders as needed, each with a file named playbook.yml. Folders are processed in alphabetical order, and rules are processed sequentially.

  4. Launch:

    make -f rpimake.mk

    the resulting image will be available in build/output.img.

Upgrade

Upgrade raspberry-make to the latest version:

make -f rpimake.mk self-update

Limitations

Some files cannot be changed by playbooks since they are used by Docker; these are:

  • /etc/hosts
  • /etc/hostname
  • /etc/mtab
  • /etc/resolv.conf

File config contains options to change these files safely.

Links

main image builder

other Raspbian-based provisioning systems

other non Raspbian-based provisioning systems

inspired by