I'm think about what could be the minimal distribution for virtualbox/vmware to build openwrt image. Ubuntu server ? Debian Server ? Or maybe it is possible to build image for router in x86 openwrt environment ?
I would install a minimal edition (definitively not "server") of any major distribution (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, ...).
I think that Graphical interface is not needed. When you write minimal distro Debian or Ubuntu - it suggest minimal server.
Debian 9 without GUI builds OpenWrt just fine. All required packages (build essentials, gcc and other) are in standard repositories.
For the (newer) OpenWrt buildslaves we also use a base Debian 9 Docker image with the following packages:
RUN apt-get update && \
apt-get install -y \
pwgen \
locales \
buildbot-slave \
build-essential \
git-core \
subversion \
libncurses5-dev \
gawk \
unzip \
wget \
curl \
ccache \
rsync
This can be trimmed down some more since pwgen
, buildbot-slave
, ccache
and rsync
are not really required to build OpenWrt.
This looks like Dockerfile to me, how about build the image in Docker container?
I can get a VirtualBox image running Debian in just a few minutes. I haven’t looked into redistribution restrictions though.
Personally, I’d retain ccache as it will speed subsequent builds on similar source greatly.