The developers of the Raspberry Pi project have introduced the rpi-image-gen toolkit, which is designed to simplify the generation of custom system images for Raspberry Pi boards. Its advantages include: fast assembly through the use of pre-built binary packages; application of the same versions of libraries and applications as Raspberry Pi OS; the ability to configure arbitrary partition layouts and use filesystem encryption; support for generating a list of utilized packages and checking for vulnerable versions of software. The code is written in Shell and is distributed under the BSD license.
The rpi-image-gen toolkit conceptually differs from previously offered utilities like pi-gen, which were aimed at preparing builds of the Raspberry Pi OS distribution. In rpi-image-gen, the system is formed using the concept of 'collections' (examples), which consist of sets of YAML files listing the packages to be installed and metadata defining the operations to be performed. The selected collections form the build profile. To generate rootfs and images with various filesystems and partition layouts in rpi-image-gen, the bdebstrap, mmdebstrap, and genimage utilities are used.
Source: opennet.ru
