2. Installation

Hint

Abstract

This chapter describes how to install Flake Pilot from packages and how to build it from its sources.

2.1. Installing the Packages

Flake Pilot components are written in Rust and are available as packages here: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/Virtualization:Appliances:Builder/flake-pilot

Install the following packages:

• flake-pilot

  The registration tool flake-ctl, the manual pages and the configuration templates. This package is always required.

• flake-pilot-podman

  The podman-pilot launcher and the flake-ctl podman subcommands.

• flake-pilot-firecracker

  The firecracker-pilot launcher, the sci guest init and the flake-ctl firecracker subcommands.

The engine itself is not part of these packages. Install podman and/or firecracker in addition, depending on which of them you want to use.

2.2. Building From Source

Manual compilation and installation can be done as follows:

make build && make install

This compiles the workspace with cargo build --release, renders the manual pages with rst2man and installs the binaries, the templates, the bash completion and the manual pages below /usr.

The build requires:

• A Rust toolchain with cargo

• python3-docutils for the manual pages

• The development files of OpenSSL, used by the download code of flake-ctl

Note

make install honors DESTDIR and PREFIX, which allows to install into a staging area, e.g make install DESTDIR=/tmp/root.

2.3. Privileges

Flake Pilot does not install any setuid binary. Actions which need more privileges than the calling user has, like mounting an image or creating a network device, are delegated to the sudo binary of the system. Therefore a user who registers or runs a flake that requires such an action needs the corresponding sudo permissions.

Applications which run rootless, e.g a plain container flake started through rootless podman, do not need any of this.

2.4. Next Steps

Continue with Getting Started to prepare the registry of your user and to register a first application.