"For developers and organisations that require a custom software image, a flexible and transparent build system is essential," according to [1]an announcement Friday at Raspberry Pi.com .

"[T]o support these customers, we have created [2]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 [3]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 [4]examples in the tree which demonstrate different use cases of rpi-image-gen [including the lightweight image [5] slim and [6] 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 [7]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 [8]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."



[1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-rpi-image-gen-build-highly-customised-raspberry-pi-software-images/

[2] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen

[3] https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen

[4] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen/tree/master/examples

[5] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen/tree/master/examples/slim

[6] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen/tree/master/examples/webkiosk

[7] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen

[8] https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-image-gen