This is an experiment: building a linux distribution of statically linked packages. The main focus is building lightweight containers.

Packages are installed under /packages/$NAME/$VERSION. The core utility at this point is withpkgs which runs a command in an isolated chroot containing a subset of packages. For example:

$ withpkgs -d bootstrap/stage2_packages -p mksh sbase -p musl -p gcc \
    -w my_working_directory /bin/sh

This runs a container with a shell, basic utilities and gcc, mounts the directory my_working_directory under /work in the container and then runs /bin/sh in the container. withpkgs does dependency resolution, so the container will also include binutils for instance.

static-distro can be bootstrapped from any Linux distribution. For Ubuntu/Debian the following packages need to be installed for doing a full bootstrap starting with stage 0:

build-essential libgmp-dev libmpc-dev libmpfr-dev lzip m4

Bootstrapping is divided into 3 stages:

• stage0: Build a cross compiler and the musl libc (runs on host distribution).
• stage1: Use cross compiler to build transitional packages needed to build stage2+ packages fully inside a static-distro chroot without depending on the host system.
• stage2: Uses only stage1 packages necessary to build packages necessary for unpacking and building further packages fully inside a static-distro chroot. stage2 packages are still unpacked on the host.
• stage3: Use only stage1 and stage2 packages to unpack and build additional packages fully inside an insolated chroot.

# Build static-distro tools
$ make -C tools

# withenv binary needs to be setuid root to be able to chroot
# (this step requires sudo)
$ make -C tools setuid

# Fetch distfiles (source archives for all the packages)
$ cd distfiles && ./fetch.sh && cd ..

# Actually run bootstrapping steps (this will take a while)
$ cd bootstrap && ./stage0.sh && ./stage1.sh && ./stage1.sh && cd ..

The result of this is the repository of packages in bootstrap/stage2_packages.

• withpkgs: running a command in an environment including particular packages, with (or without) version constraints. (uses withenv)
• pkgbuild: build a source package. (uses withpkgs)
• withenv: mechanism for running a command in an environment consisting of particular package versions.

• pkgcontrol: extract information from package control files.
• pkgsolve: solve package constraints and yield a list of package versions.
• pkgvercmp: compare package version numbers