Igalia, known for its involvement in the development of free projects such as GNOME, GTK, WebKitGTK, Epiphany, Maemo, GStreamer, Wine, Mesa, and freedesktop.org, has introduced the Moonforge project, simplifying the creation and maintenance of custom Linux distributions for various devices and embedded systems. The distribution's components are based on build tools and package metadata from the OpenEmbedded and Yocto projects. Project-specific developments are distributed under the MIT license. <\/p>\n
Moonforge provides developers and system integrators with a framework, a set of configuration files, and a collection of components for creating atomically updatable system images, based on the application of well-established and widely-used industry technologies such as Yocto, BitBake, and KAS. The generated images support a simplified update installation process and ensure a long support lifecycle. The main goal of the project is to offer embedded system developers a convenient toolkit that allows them to focus on enhancing product-specific functionalities without spending time on tasks related to creating and maintaining a distribution. <\/p>\n
The system image is assembled from a set of ready-made Yocto modules. Each module is responsible for specific capabilities or support for a particular target hardware platform. For instance, modules are available for Docker, QEMU, or Podman support, management of updates via RAUC, and creating graphical interfaces based on composite Weston, launching a browser interface based on WebKit for internet kiosks, and builds for Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 boards. server<\/a> Three release distribution channels are supported: stable (stable LTS branch), next (branch where the next LTS release is developed), and main (experimental branch where development is carried out). Each branch is tied to its own version of the Yocto component set. The stable branch is updated once a month and corresponds to the LTS releases of Yocto. <\/p>\n Three release distribution channels are supported: stable (the stable LTS branch), next (the branch where the next LTS release is developed), and main (the experimental branch under development). Each branch is tied to its own version of the Yocto component set. The stable branch is updated once a month and corresponds to Yocto LTS releases. <\/p>\n Updates are delivered via OTA (Over-The-Air) using the Mender toolkit and are installed atomically by replacing the entire system. Two identical root partitions are created on the storage \u2014 active and passive. The new update is installed in the passive partition, without affecting the operation of the active one. After rebooting, the partitions switch places \u2014 the partition with the new update becomes active, while the previously active partition is switched to passive mode and awaits the next update installation. If something goes wrong after the update, a rollback to the previous system version is performed. <\/p>\n The BitBake toolkit is used to create system images, and KAS is used for configuration and ensuring reproducible builds. Builds, updates, vulnerability reports, and SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) metadata are automatically collected and published using continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI\/CD) systems. The build infrastructure based on Moonforge can be deployed both on local servers<\/a>, both in local and public or private cloud environments. <\/p>\n