Building SystemRescue from Source

SystemRescue itself

SystemRescue is based on Arch Linux and uses a patched version of archiso to build the released .iso images.

You can find all sources, build tools and build documentation at https://gitlab.com/systemrescue/systemrescue-sources

Arch Linux packages

The build process outlined above imports all programs that are not directly developed as part of SystemRescue from the package repositories of Arch Linux. The source code and build tooling for all of these programs are available from Arch Linux.

It is suggested to first read the Arch Build System Documentation.

The build instructions for all packages are stored in PKGBUILD files. These, and eventually patches, are available for download from https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages

Make sure to use the correct branch and tagged version. If you want to rebuild a package as used in a specific version of SystemRescue, use the package version that was current at the release date of SystemRescue. See for example the BUILD_ID in /etc/os-release inside SystemRescue for this.

When you have the correct PKGBUILD file, run makepkg to build. By default this will automatically download the required source files from the upstream project. Alternatively Arch Linux publishes these sources at https://archive.archlinux.org/repos/<date>/sources/. Use the release date as noted above.

systemrescue-custompkg

A few packages that are contained in SystemRescue aren’t available in binary form from the official Arch Linux repositories. These are for example packaged by Arch Linux AUR or packaged by SytemRescue.

PKGBUILD files, patches and documentation are for these are available at https://gitlab.com/systemrescue/systemrescue-custompkg