Raptor

Raptor is a modern, fast, and easy-to-use system for building disk images, bootable isos, containers and much more - all from a simple, Dockerfile-inspired syntax.

It uses systemd-nspawn for sandboxing when building or running containers.

Tip

📕 For more information, read the raptor book

What it looks like

Raptor uses a syntax similar to Dockerfile. Statements start with uppercase keywords, and are terminated by end of line.

All lines starting with # are treated as comments:

# Start from a well-known docker image
FROM docker://debian:trixie

# Set the hostname
WRITE "example-host\n" /etc/hostname

# Create app directory
MKDIR -p /app/bin

# This copies "program" from the host to "/app/bin" inside the build target
COPY program /app/bin/program

What it can do

Tip

📕 For more information, read the raptor book

Raptor builds layers, much in the same way as Docker.

However, this is where the similarities end! Raptor is able to run build processes on top of finished layers, to produce any kind of desired output.

The companion project raptor-builders can create:

• Debian Live Boot iso files
• Disk images for virtual (or physical) machines

Example: Building a bootable iso

After installing Raptor, create a file called base.rapt:

# Start from a docker iso
FROM docker://debian:trixie

# Set root password to "raptor"
RUN usermod -p "$1$GQf2tS9s$vu72NbrDtUcvvqnyAogrH0" root

# Update package sources, and install packages
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -qy systemd-sysv live-boot linux-image-amd64

Then clone the raptor-builders project, which has the build container for making Debian Live Boot images:

git clone https://github.com/chrivers/raptor-builders.git

Then run the deblive container from raptor-builders, using the base(.rapt) we just made:

# Create cache dir (used in `-C` option)
mkdir /tmp/raptor-cache

# Run the `deblive` builder from `raptor-builders`
sudo raptor run \
    '$rbuild.deblive' \
    -L rbuild raptor-builders \
    -C /tmp/raptor-cache \
    -I base \
    -O liveboot.iso

After this step, the file liveboot.iso is ready to use. We can try it out with QEMU:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -m 4G -cdrom liveboot.iso

Tip

📕 The whole process is described in much more detail in the book!.

Need help?

The 📕 Raptor Book contains a lot more information, including a thorough description of all instructions, features, and a grammar for the language itself.

License

Raptor is Free Software, licensed under the GNU GPL-3.0.

The Raptor icon is derived from a Creative Commons Attribution-licensed icon.