Develop KDE Linux locally

CI Images

The OS images produced by CI runs can be downloaded from here. This can be useful to test changes from a merge request locally.

Improve Local Build Speed

In order to speed up local builds, create a mkosi.local.conf file in the root of the repository with the following content:

[Content]
Environment=LOCALE_GEN="en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" # replace with your locale`
Environment=MIRRORS_COUNTRY=us # replace with your country code`
Environment=PARALLEL_DOWNLOADS=50 # if your internet connection is fast

You need to be using the Btrfs storage driver for docker, otherwise this won’t really work.

If your host filesystem uses Btrfs (like KDE Linux), add the following to /etc/docker/daemon.json

{
  "storage-driver": "btrfs"
}

Official docker documentation explaining this can be found here.

If you don’t use Btrfs for your host machine, you can still create a Btrfs volume backed by a file like so:

systemctl stop docker.socket docker.service || true
fallocate -l 64G /store/docker.btrfs
mkfs.btrfs /store/docker.btrfs
[ -d /var/lib/docker ] || mkdir /var/lib/docker
mount /store/docker.btrfs /var/lib/docker
systemctl restart docker.socket docker.service

Then run:

./build_docker.sh --incremental

Article contributed by under the CC-BY-4.0 license.