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Visual overview

Prefer a visual tour? See the Tromsø overview → landing page.

⚠️ Alpha — early development. Not production-ready. APIs and behaviour may change without notice.

Aurora Tromso is a BuildStream-based KDE Linux OCI/bootc image, modeled on Project Bluefin's projectbluefin/dakota. It builds KDE Plasma 6 on top of freedesktop-sdk and publishes a bootable OCI image to ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso.

Status: Builds successfully and boots to a working KDE Plasma 6 Wayland desktop.

Architecture​

Aurora Tromso uses a two-repo model:

tuna-os/tromso          (this repo — Aurora customizations + OCI composition)
├── elements/
│   ├── kde-build-meta.bst    junction → hanthor/kde-build-meta
│   ├── tromso/               Aurora Tromso-specific layers (theming, apps, overlays)
│   └── oci/tromso.bst        top-level build target → ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso
└── Justfile

hanthor/kde-build-meta  (KDE .bst elements — KDE Linux base image)
└── elements/kde/
    ├── qt6/        (~30 elements — qt6-qtbase, qt6-qtdeclarative, etc.)
    ├── frameworks/  (~70 elements — kcoreaddons, kio, kirigami, etc.)
    ├── libs/        (~17 elements — libkscreen, qcoro, phonon, etc.)
    ├── plasma/      (~41 elements — plasma-workspace, kwin, sddm, etc.)
    └── apps/        (~9 elements — dolphin, kate, okular, gammaray, etc.)

kde-build-meta mirrors the role of gnome-build-meta in the GNOME ecosystem — it builds a complete KDE Linux desktop that can be used standalone or as the base for derived images like Aurora Tromso.

Quick Start​

Prerequisites​

  • Podman
  • just (task runner)
  • ~100 GB free disk space for build cache

Build​

git clone https://github.com/tuna-os/tromso.git
cd tromso

# Background build with live log tailing
just bst-build

# Or foreground build + OCI export
just build

Boot a VM for testing​

# Generate a bootable disk image (requires a completed build)
just generate-bootable-image

# Boot the image in QEMU
just boot-vm

# SSH in (password: aurora)
ssh -p 2222 root@localhost

Useful Justfile recipes​

RecipeDescription
just bst-buildBackground build, logs to /var/tmp/aurora-build.log
just buildForeground build + OCI export
just logTail the build log
just generate-bootable-imageCreate a bootable raw disk image via bootc
just boot-vmBoot the raw image in QEMU (SSH on port 2222, serial on 4444)
just bst <args>Run any arbitrary bst command inside the build container

CI/CD — CASD​

The CI workflow (.github/workflows/build-buildgrid.yml) builds oci/tromso.bst with local CASD on the runner, then pushes the result to GHCR:

ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso:latest
ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso:<date>
ghcr.io/tuna-os/tromso:<git-sha>

How it works:

  1. GitHub Actions runs BuildStream inside the pinned bst2 container
  2. BuildStream uses local CASD (~/.cache/buildstream) with CI-tuned scheduler settings
  3. The built target is exported as an OCI image and pushed to GHCR

Cold builds (empty CASD cache on the runner) are slower; warm runner caches significantly reduce runtime.

Triggers: push to main (element changes), daily at 06:00 UTC, manual dispatch.

Updating KDE Packages​

KDE package .bst definitions live in hanthor/kde-build-meta. After committing there, update the junction ref in elements/kde-build-meta.bst:

# 1. Commit + push kde-build-meta
cd /path/to/kde-build-meta
TMPDIR=/var/tmp git commit -m "..."
git push origin master

# 2. Get new SHA and hash
SHA=$(git rev-parse --short=7 HEAD)
curl -sL https://github.com/hanthor/kde-build-meta/archive/${SHA}.tar.gz | tee /tmp/kbm.tar.gz | sha256sum

# 3. Update elements/kde-build-meta.bst with new url/ref/base-dir

# 4. Commit tromso
cd /path/to/tromso
TMPDIR=/var/tmp git commit -m "Update junction to kde-build-meta ${SHA}"

See AGENTS.md for full conventions and workflows.

References​