README.md

buildroot.nix

Build buildroot with nix.

Why?

Building embedded linux rootfs images using buildroot is (usually) deterministic, but requires some host system setup to get working. While it seems simple to tell people "just sudo apt install these packages, that ties you to a specific distribution/version and there's no way to keep that package list up-to-date.

Nix is able to provide a hermetic and bit-for-bit reproducible build environment with which to build buildroot. This gives everyone on your team (and CI!) the same build environment regardless of which distro they are running and what software they have installed: no more "works on my machine" as your team grows. Additionally, nix gives you the ability to create a shared remote cache so developers can automatically reuse builds without having to build a custom caching layer.

Why not use nixos?

Buildroot is more familiar to embedded teams and requires less ramp up for developers. Also, it is easier to integrate third-party or vendor code with buildroot than it is to integrate with nixos.

How do I set this up?

Add the following flake.nix to the root of your buildroot repo:

{
  inputs.buildroot-nix.url = "github:velentr/buildroot.nix/master";

  outputs = {
    self,
    nixpkgs,
    buildroot-nix,
  }: let
    supportedSystems = ["x86_64-linux"];
    forAllSystems = nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs supportedSystems;
  in {
    packages = forAllSystems (system: let
      buildrootPackages = buildroot-nix.lib.mkBuildroot {
        name = "my-buildroot";
        pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
        defconfig = "qemu_aarch64_virt_defconfig";
        lockfile = ./buildroot.lock;
        src = self;
      };
    in {
      lockfile = buildrootPackages.packageLockFile;
      default = buildrootPackages.buildroot;
    });
  };
}

Make sure to set the appropriate defconfig for you hardware. Then, generate the lockfile to ensure that future builds are deterministic:

nix build .#lockfile
cp result buildroot.lock

This step needs to be repeated as packages are added or updated to keep the lockfile up-to-date.

Once the lockfile is set up, you can build your buildroot images:

nix build