Baurzhan Ismagulov

Isar - Building Images with the Power of Debian

Siemens and other companies heavily rely on Debian for a wide range of products. To streamline the process of building and maintaining images for these products, we utilize a tool called Isar. Isar allows for the use of Debian binary packages and facilitates creation of custom packages from source, providing a unique combination of stability and customization.

By leveraging Debian’s robustness, security fixes and updates, product builders benefit from a solid foundation. At the same time, Isar offers the flexibility to tailor solutions to specific requirements, such as building custom kernels or including patches that are not yet upstream.

During this session, we will introduce Isar and showcase its advantages through successful projects that have embraced its capabilities. We will demonstrate how this approach scales effectively by using layers that abstract common bases across products. Furthermore, we will highlight the improved Continuous Integration (CI) pipelines achieved by leveraging the new caching capabilities of Isar, enabling the rapid building of complete bootable images for various architectures within minutes.