16.4 Image Modules

Let’s take the example of the Pine64, an ARM based machine. To be able to produce an image targeting this board, we need the following elements:

• An operating-system record containing at least an appropriate kernel (linux-libre-arm64-generic) and bootloader u-boot-pine64-lts-bootloader) for the Pine64.
• Possibly, an image-type record providing a way to turn an operating-system record to an image record suitable for the Pine64.
• An actual image that can be instantiated with the guix system image command.

The (gnu system images pine64) module provides all those elements: pine64-barebones-os, pine64-image-type and pine64-barebones-raw-image respectively.

The module returns the pine64-barebones-raw-image in order for users to be able to run:

guix system image gnu/system/images/pine64.scm

Now, thanks to the pine64-image-type record declaring the 'pine64-raw image-type, one could also prepare a my-pine.scm file with the following content:

(use-modules (gnu system images pine64))
(operating-system
  (inherit pine64-barebones-os)
  (timezone "Europe/Athens"))

to customize the pine64-barebones-os, and run:

$ guix system image --image-type=pine64-raw my-pine.scm

Note that there are other modules in the gnu/system/images directory targeting Novena, Pine64, PinebookPro and Rock64 machines.