.. _systemdeps: Host Requirements To Build Images --------------------------------- When building OS images, several tools and sub-systems are used and required on the host {kiwi} is called at. For example, to build a virtual disk image, several tools needs to be available on the host that builds the image. This includes tools for partition table setup or tools to create filesystems. The number of required components depends on the selected image type and the *features* used with the image. We cannot expect the users of {kiwi} to know about each and every component that is needed to build the image. Therefore a concept to help with the host requirements exists and is named `kiwi-systemdeps` The `kiwi-systemdeps` concept consists out of a collection of sub-packages provided with the `python-kiwi` main package. Each individual package requires a number of tools and subsystem packages which belongs to the package category. There are the following systemdeps packages: `kiwi-systemdeps-core`: * Supports building the simple root archive `tbz` image type. * Installs the package managers which are supported by the target distribution as well as the `tar` archiving tool. `kiwi-systemdeps-containers`: * Supports building `OCI` image types used with `docker`, `podman`. * Installs the distribution specific tool chain to build OCI compliant container images. `kiwi-systemdeps-containers-wsl`: * Supports building `appx` image types. * Installs the distribution specific tool chain to build WSL compliant container images on Windows systems. `kiwi-systemdeps-iso-media`: * Supports building `iso` image types and `oem` install media. * Installs all tools required to build ISO filesystems. * Depends on the `-core`, `-filesystems` and `-bootloaders` kiwi-systemdeps packages. `kiwi-systemdeps-bootloaders`: * Supports building bootable `oem` and `iso` image types. * Installs all bootloader tools depending on the host architecture to allow setup and install of the bootloader. The pulled in components are required for any image that is able to boot through some BIOS or firmware. * Depends on the `-core` kiwi-systemdeps packages. `kiwi-systemdeps-filesystems`: * Supports building `fs-type`, `oem`, `pxe`, `kis` and live `iso` image types. * Installs all tools to create filesystems supported with {kiwi}. The pulled in components are needed for any image type that needs to create a filesystem. This excludes the archive based image types like `docker`, `appx` or `tbz`. The package also installs tools one level below the actual filesystem creation toolkit. These are components to manage loop devices as well as partition table setup and subsystem support like LVM and LUKS. * Depends on the `-core` kiwi-systemdeps packages. `kiwi-systemdeps-disk-images`: * Supports building the `oem` image type. * Installs all tools to create virtual disks. In {kiwi}, virtual disks are created using the QEMU toolchain. * Depends on the `-filesystems` and `-bootloaders` kiwi-systemdeps packages. `kiwi-systemdeps-image-validation`: * Installs the `jing` tool to validate the image description. This is useful for detailed error reports from {kiwi} in case of an image description validation error. In addition, the `anymarkup` Python module is installed if the the option to install recommended packages is set. With `anymarkup` available, {kiwi} can also handle image descriptions in another format than the XML markup, like YAML. Depending on the image type the kiwi-systemdeps packages can help to setup the host system quickly for the task to build an image. In case the host should support *everything* there is also the main `kiwi-systemdeps` package which has a dependency on all other existing systemdeps packages. .. note:: Pulling in all `kiwi-systemdeps` packages can result in quite some packages to become installed on the host. This is because the required packages itself comes with a number of dependencies like java for jing as one example.