Building the ISO

Work in progress. The build pipeline runs end-to-end, but live-boot reliability and the Calamares installer are still being stabilized. Expect rough edges.

Requirements

• Arch-based host (Arch, Manjaro, EndeavourOS, CachyOS) — makepkg and pacman are required for the kernel build step
• 16 GB+ RAM
• 60 GB+ free disk space
• Internet connection (packages are downloaded during build)
• A CachyOS desktop ISO placed in build-deps/

Step 0 — Get the source ISO

Download the CachyOS desktop ISO and place it in build-deps/:

build-deps/cachyos-desktop-linux-260308.iso

Update scripts/build.config if your filename differs:

ISO_FILE="cachyos-desktop-linux-260308.iso"
PROJECT_ROOT="/absolute/path/to/jarvisos"

Step 1 — Install host build tools

cd scripts
sudo bash 00-install-prereq.sh

This detects your host distro and installs arch-install-scripts, squashfs-tools, xorriso, p7zip, dosfstools, fakeroot, git, curl, and python3.

Step 2 — Run the full build

cd scripts
make all

Or run steps individually when debugging — see The Build Pipeline for what each one does:

make step1    # Extract CachyOS ISO
make step2    # Unsquash rootfs → build/iso-rootfs/
make step3    # Install KDE Plasma Wayland + all system packages into rootfs
make step3b   # Build linux-jarvisos kernel + install into rootfs
make step4    # Install Project-JARVIS daemon
make step5    # Install Calamares installer
make step6    # Repack rootfs into SquashFS
make step7    # Assemble final bootable ISO → build/jarvisos-YYYYMMDD-x86_64.iso

Estimated total time: 60–120 min depending on CPU and network — kernel compilation is the bottleneck (see Building the Kernel for ways to speed this up).

Step 3 — Test in QEMU

./scripts/booter.sh          # Boot with UEFI (recommended)
./scripts/booter.sh --bios   # Or boot with BIOS

Step 4 — Write to USB

sudo dd if=build/jarvisos-*-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdX bs=4M status=progress conv=fsync

Boot from USB and use the Calamares installer on the desktop.

Current status