Host Requirements To Build Images

Building OS images requires several tools and subsystems to be present on the KIWI NG host. For example, to build a virtual disk image, tools for partition table setup or tools to create filesystems must be available on the host that builds the image.

The number of required components depends on the selected image type and the features used with the image. It’s unreasonable to expect KIWI NG users to know which exact components are needed to build the image. A mechanism called kiwi-systemdeps is designed to handle the host requirements.

kiwi-systemdeps consists of a collection of sub-packages provided with the python-kiwi main package. Each individual package requires a number of tools and subsystem packages that belong 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 that are supported by the target distribution, as well as the tar archiving tool.

kiwi-systemdeps-containers:

  • Supports building OCI image types used with docker and podman.

  • Installs the distribution-specific toolchain to build OCI- compliant container images.

kiwi-systemdeps-containers-wsl:

  • Supports building appx and wsl image types. The wsl type is the successor to the former appx type.

  • Installs the distribution-specific toolchain 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 by KIWI NG. 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. Virtual disks in KIWI NG 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 NG if an image description validation error occurs. In addition, the anymarkup Python module is installed if the option to install recommended packages is set. With anymarkup available, KIWI NG can also handle image descriptions in a format other than the XML markup (for example, YAML).

Depending on the image type, the kiwi-systemdeps packages can help to quickly set up the host system for building images. In case the host must support everything, there is also the main kiwi-systemdeps package that has all other existing systemdeps packages as its dependency.

Note

Pulling in all kiwi-systemdeps packages can result in a large number of packages installed on the host because the required packages themselves have other dependencies (for example, java for jing).