Raspberry Pi Announces New Tool for Customized Software Images

"For developers and organisations that require a custom software image, a flexible and transparent build system is essential," according to an announcement Friday at Raspberry Pi.com.

"[T]o support these customers, we have created rpi-image-gen, a powerful new tool designed to put you in complete control of your Raspberry Pi images." If you're building an embedded system or an industrial controller, you'll need complete control over the software resident on the device, and home users may wish to build their own OS and have it pre-configured exactly the way they want... rpi-image-gen is an alternative to pi-gen, which is the tool we use to create and deploy the Raspberry Pi OS distribution. rpi-image-gen... offers a very granular level of control over file system construction and software image creation... [B]eing able to help reduce software build time, provide guaranteed ownership of support, and reuse standard methodologies to ensure authenticity of software were all of paramount importance, and among the reasons why we created a new home-grown build tool for Raspberry Pi devices...

There is a small number of examples in the tree which demonstrate different use cases of rpi-image-gen [including the lightweight image slim and webkiosk for booting into browser kiosk mode]. All create bootable disk images and serve to illustrate how one might use rpi-image-gen to create a bespoke image for a particular purpose. The number of examples will grow over time and we welcome suggestions for new ones... Visit the rpi-image-gen GitHub repository to get started. There, you'll find documentation and examples to guide you through creating custom Raspberry Pi images.
Some technical details from the announcement.

• "Similar to pi-gen, rpi-image-gen leverages the power, reliability, and trust of installing a Debian Linux system for the device. However, unlike pi-gen, rpi-image-gen introduces some new concepts [profiles, image layouts, and config] which serve to dictate the build footprint and installation."

• The tool also lets you exclude from your package "things that would otherwise be installed as part of the profile."

• The tool's GitHub repository notes that it also allows you output your software bill of materials (SBOM) "to list the exact set of packages that were used to create the image." And it can even generate a list of CVEs identified from the SBOM to "give consumers of your image confidence that your image does not contain any known vulnerabilities."

Buildroot

[MarginallyStable]

Buildroot

Re:

[jimjoe]

Also guix system image [gnu.org] perhaps.

Too Late

[darkain]

This feels too little, too late.

The RPi4 and RPi5 are normal UEFI devices now where you can walk through a normal installer process by booting off USB, just like a normal desktop. And from this point, it is fairly trivial to use a -standard- method of generating a disk image just like you would any other PC. Do the install on a single machine, configure it to your liking, and image that disk. You don't need device-dependent proprietary tooling to do this, it has been the norm for literally decades, and work

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, good thing only RPi4 and RPi5 are the only Pi's ever being used anywhere for anythi..... oh wait.

There's plenty of 1,2,3's and nanos out there. But who needs tools specifically *checks notes* "for small embedded systems that have an extremely limited footprint"?

Yeah, lets not make tools easier to use. Fuck those impact drivers, just use a screw driver and your fat ass just like gramps did, it worked out for them, ammirite?!

Sounds like fun

[drainbramage]

Way back when I would compile my own version of Linux for memory and/or disk constrained PC's.
It was exciting to bring life to a machine that was destined for the dump.
I am interested in trying this just to see what I can squeeze out of a Pi.
Hope they extend this to include some of the other Pi boards I have laying around.

I am replying to this post

[jfdavis668]

Just to increase the numbers. Not enough comments on this interesting post.

Great for education

[cerberusss]

This seems perfect for education. We give the students a Raspberry Pi, a breadboard, an SD card and an image. And we want to include some libraries on the image so they can play around with a couple of electronics components. This seems quite useful for that.

Re: Complexity creep

[RazorSharp]

There already are dozens of OSes you can run on a Raspberry Pi. I have one running FreeBSD, one running Alpine, and one running Raspberry Pi OS.

The Raspberry Pi remains a basic ARM SBC. The complexity of what you want to use it for is up to the user.