Developer guideGetting started

Building from source

Set up a development environment and build an AbstractOS image locally.

Images are built in a container so the host distribution does not matter. You need Podman or Docker and about 40 GB of free disk space.

1
Clone the image repository
All build tooling lives in abstract/image.
2
Pick a target
Targets are named <arch>-<device>, for example amd64-generic or arm64-pinephone-pro.
3
Build
The first build downloads packages and takes a while; later builds are incremental.

bash

git clone https://gitlab.com/abstract/image.git
cd image
./abstract-image build --target amd64-generic
# output: out/abstractos-amd64-generic.iso

Testing in a VM

bash

./abstract-image run --target amd64-generic --form-factor tablet

Tip

--form-factor sets the VM resolution and emulates touch input so you can test phone and tablet layouts on a PC.

Last updated October 5, 2026Edit this page on GitLab