AOSC OS Core

AOSC OS Core is introduced after the final debut of AOSC OS3 (the last version of AOSC OS with a versioned name), designed to be a standardized base of:

• Core runtime libraries.
• Basic toolchains.

For AOSC OS and its potential derivatives.

The Core also serves as a versioning agent for AOSC OS (provided by the aosc-aaa package - the base rock definition of AOSC OS).

Rationale

AOSC OS is a decently large project, holding more than 3,500 packages in the ABBS Tree and is available for six architectures:

• AMD64/x86_64 Intel/AMD compatible personal computers, workstations, and servers.
• ARMv7 32-bit development boards, phones, and tablets.
• ARMv8 64-bit development boards, phones, tablets, and servers.
• MIPS32 (MIPS-II) personal computers, workstations, and servers.
• PowerPC 32-bit (Big Endian) personal computers, Macintosh, workstations, and servers.
• PowerPC 64-bit (Big Endian) personal computers, Macintosh, workstations, and servers.

Maintaining such large amount of packages across multiple architectures is not an easy job for the maintainers of the project: under the circumstances of security vulnerbilities, major updates, and mass rebuilds, AOSC OS developers may not be effective at finishing the respective tasks in a timely fashion.

Added on with annual/semi-annual (or schedules of similar fashion) releases, AOSC OS could be too time consuming for our limited team of maintainers.

Therefore, AOSC OS Core will serve a standard for ALL AOSC OS ports with a version definition of its counterpart - released on a non-regulated schedule, thus saving time and potential frustration for the maintainers.

In practice

The following practices is defined for AOSC OS Core development:

• AOSC OS Core will take in place of the "AOSC OSn" (where "n" is a natural number) versioning rules, however it will be versioned in "x.y.z" format.
• aosc-aaa will be included as the only base-line definition for AOSC OS Core, with filesystem structure and basic configurations that may affect system behaviors
• AOSC OS Core will NOT be updated as soon as new components were released, any major version bump should be first discussed (fork it if you do need to update, and PR if you feel like doing so).
• Only tool chain level packages like will be included (by definition).
• ALL security updates will be provided when applicable.

An example of update cycle

AOSC OS3, after being released as the last versioned release (it will start rolling while AOSC OS Core is still versioned), it will release versions like follows:

• Stable series: 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, ..., 3.10, 3.11, ...
• Experimental (playground) series: 3.99.1, 3.99.2, ..., 3.99.10, 3.99.11, ...

Stable and Experimental series will not affect each other, nor do they have a "testing - release" relationship. 3.99 series (Experimental) will become the future 4.0 series... And the cycle continues.

Packages

AOSC OS Core currently include the following packages:

• linux+api, "Linux API Headers for glibc"
• zlib, "A Massively Spiffy Yet Delicately Unobtrusive Compression Library"
• glibc, "GNU C Library"
• tzdata, "Time Zone Data"
• gmp, "GNU Multiprecision library"
• mpfr, "Functions for multiple precision math"
• mpc, "A library for the arithmetic of complex numbers"
• isl, "Library for manipulating sets and relations of integer points bounded by linear constraints"
• gcc-runtime, "GNU Compiler Collection (runtime libraries only)"
• gcc, "GNU Compiler Collection", (languages: c, c++, fortran, lto)
• binutils, "a set of programs to assemble and manipulate binary and object files"
• gdbm, "GNU Database Manager library"
• db, "Berkeley DB embedded database system"
• perl, "a highly capable and feature rich programming language"
• readline, "GNU realine library"
• ncurses, "System V Release 4.0 curses emulation library"
• bash, "Bourne Again SHell"
• make, "GNU Make, designed for code processing"
• aosc-aaa, "bed rock level system definitions"

(total of 19 packages)

Building the Core

Please first refer to our AOSC Cadet Training handbook.

Derivatives of AOSC OS Core

Derivatives may be built upon AOSC OS Core, as the packages provided in AOSC OS Core may form a fully working chroot environment for developers to get started.

However, BuildKit can still be used as BuildKit itself was built upon AOSC OS Core (convenient huh) - and to be fair, a flavour of AOSC OS release on its own.

You may obtain a copy of BuildKit here.

Need help?

All questions and bug reports should be filed to the "Issues" section of this repository.