Mender is an open source over-the-air (OTA) software updater for embedded Linux devices. Mender comprises a client running at the embedded device, as well as a server that manages deployments across many devices.

This repository contains mender-dist-packages, which is used to create distribution packages of the mender client software

To start using Mender, we recommend that you begin with the Getting started section in the Mender documentation.

You need to install Docker Engine to use this environment. Then you need access to the registry.gitlab.com/northern.tech container registry:

1. Create a new authentication token for the registry at https://gitlab.com/-/user_settings/personal_access_tokens

2. Log in to the registry:

docker login registry.gitlab.com/northern.tech

If you don't have access to the above registry and need to build the container images required for builds locally, see the build.sh script and Dockerfile in the mender-test-containers repository.

To build the DEB packages, run the docker-build-package script as follows:

./docker-build-package build-type distro release arch package-name [version] [save-orig]

The only supported build-type is crosscompile. distro, release and arch define the target OS. distro and release can currently be one of the following combinations:

• debian: bullseye, bookworm
• ubuntu: focal, jammy, noble

These combinations change in time with new distribution releases and old releases going out of support.

The arch argument specifies the architecture to build the package(s) for and can be one of the following values:

• armhf
• arm64
• amd64

The package-name and version define what should be built. Possible package names correspond to the Mender components:

• mender-artifact
• mender-cli
• mender-client4
• mender-connect
• mender-configure
• mender-gateway
• mender-flash
• mender-monitor
• mender-setup
• mender-snapshot
• mender-orchestrator
• mender-orchestrator-support

The version specified with version may be an exact version of the package (usually a tag in the component's repository) or the name of the main branch. The version also specifies the version of the recipes used. If there is a recipe for the specific version in the respective recipes/$package-name directory, it is used. Otherwise the debian-master recipe for the given package is used.

Note: Some recipes for past versions of various packages can be found in git history.

When building the .orig tarball (which is needed for building actual .deb packages), save-orig must be set to true.

A full example can then be:

./docker-build-package crosscompile debian bookworm amd64 mender-flash 1.0.2 true
./docker-build-package crosscompile debian bookworm amd64 mender-flash 1.0.2

When finished, the packages should be ready in the output/ directory.

We welcome and ask for your contribution. If you would like to contribute to Mender, please read our guide on how to best get started contributing code or documentation.

Mender is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

We take security very seriously. If you come across any issue regarding security, please disclose the information by sending an email to [email protected]. Please do not create a new public issue. We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

• Join the Mender Hub discussion forum
• Follow us on Twitter. Please feel free to tweet us questions.
• Fork us on Github
• Create an issue in the bugtracker
• Email us at [email protected]
• Connect to the #mender IRC channel on Libera

Mender was created by the team at Northern.tech AS, with many contributions from the community. Thanks everyone!

Mender is sponsored by Northern.tech AS.