Building ravynOS Locally
We build ravynOS using the services of Cirrus CI, but while hacking on pieces you will need to build parts or all of the system locally. First, please see the Developer Environment Setup and System Layout pages. As of v0.5.X "Sneaky Snek" (May 2024), ravynOS can be built on a regular FreeBSD 15 snapshot. However, most output of the build still needs to run on ravynOS for testing. The preferred way to build everything is using tools/ravynOS/build.sh from the top level of the source tree.
The three main targets are kernel, base, and system. Kernel should be self-explanatory. Base provides the bulk of the underlying Unix OS - FreeBSD 15-CURRENT plus some additional stuff. System provides the Frameworks, system app bundles, desktop environment, and tools. You can build the live ISO using tools/ravynOS/build.sh iso. See the
.cirrus.yml (opens in a new tab) file and build.sh for more details of the build commands.
As of 0.5.X, ravynOS is mostly self-contained in the source repo and does not need extra ports or packages.
Preparing to build
The output of the build goes to /usr/obj/[source path]/[machine architecture] - e.g. /usr/obj/Users/you/ravyn/amd64.amd64. If you don't want to build as root, you need to create the path ahead of time or give yourself ownership of /usr/obj with chown.
Building the kernel
Kernel source lives mainly in sys/ and can be built by doing tools/ravynOS/build.sh kernel. This defaults to a parallel build using as many CPUs as the system has. You can override the detection by passing CORES=n on the command line. It also defaults to incremental builds (i.e. does not clean automatically). You can
run make clean or delete the output directories to do a full fresh build.
Alternately, use make -jX buildkernel where X is the number of CPUs you can devote to the build. Append WITHOUT_CLEAN=1 to the buildkernel command if you want to do incremental builds. You can install your kernel and modules with make installkernel.
Building the base ('world')
The base, or 'world', is the FreeBSD user parts including C library, compiler toolchain, commands, etc as well as ravynOS additions like launchd, libxpc, libdispatch, and so on. You can build this monster by running tools/ravynOS/build.sh base. As with the kernel, the default is a parallel, incremental build.
Alternately, use make -jX buildworld MK_LIB32=no. Append WITHOUT_CLEAN=1 to the buildworld command to do incremental builds, which are much faster. It can be installed over your running system with make installworld MK_LIB32=no if you are developing on ravynOS.
Building the Frameworks and Desktop
The system target of ravynOS consists of the Cocoa and Core frameworks, additional tools, WindowServer, SystemUIServer, LoginWindow, Dock, Filer (file manager), menu applets, and so on. This part builds separately from base because it churns the most. Build it with tools/ravynOS/build.sh system. You may also want to build the extras (currently neofetch and plutil) using tools/ravynOS/build.sh extras at this stage.
Packaging and building a live ISO image
After building everything, create the three 'packages' needed for the ISO with tools/ravynOS/build.sh kernelpkg basepkg systempkg. If you have built them before, you might need to run tools/ravynOS/build.sh cleanpkg first. This is because the basepkg build is long, and we don't rebuild it unless you specifically ask. You can use any mix of the 3 pkg targets to selectively build only components that have changed.
Once the packages exist, build the bootable ISO using tools/ravynOS/build.sh iso. You will find the output in /usr/local/furybsd/iso.