DIET-PC 3 Downloads
- DIET-PC 3 Assembly Frameworks
- DIET-PC 3 Development Virtual Machines
- Browse DIET-PC 3 Source Code (retrieve using rsync)
- Browse DIET-PC 3 Package Repository (packages are normally fetched using rsync (build-time) or ipkg (run-time))
- Legacy Downloads (DIET-PC 2 and earlier)
- Legacy compilation Instructions (DIET-PC 2 and earlier)
Compiling from Source
Compiling from source is a complicated and (at present) largely undocumented business, so don't attempt this unless you have a good reason for doing so. You don't need to compile the distribution from scratch in order to assemble bootable DIET-PC images (see below).
To avoid dependency complications, DIET-PC is compiled "natively" using carefully baselined Debian virtual machines running under the QEMU emulator, rather than cross-compiling. In the cases of x86 and x86_64 platforms, the QEMU virtual machines can easily be converted to VMware virtual machines if you prefer to use this.
To compile from source, first download and install the relevant development virtual machine, then retrieve the source code, patches and build automation using:
rsync -av rsync://dietpc.org/downloads/source/ diet-pc-src/DIET-PC build automation is a work in progress - there is no master build script as yet, and some package build scripts may not work properly. Running "./build.sh" in each subdirectory will assemble iPKG trees for the relevant packages, which can then be either moved/copied to ~/diet-pc/ipkg-tree/ for packaging using the Makefile ("make ipks"), or packaged individually using "ipkg-build -o root -g root ipkg-dir". You must build the ipkg package before compiling anything else.
Building O/S Images
To build bootable DIET-PC 3 images, all that you initially require is a Linux platform (any mainstream Linux will suffice) and the appropriate DIET-PC 3 Assembly Framework for your assembly host architecture. The DIET-PC target architecture need not match that of the assembly host, although at present we strongly recommend that the target have the same endianness as the host (only likely to be a problem for PowerPC targets).
To avoid possible problems, we recommend that you download the DIET-PC 3 Development Virtual Machine for your target architecture and use this as your assembly host. Development VMs run under Windows (x86) and have the DIET-PC 3 assembly framework preloaded, and include various services that you can use to bootstrap and test DIET-PC 3 (DHCP, TFTP, XDM, RDP, VNC servers, etc). You can also test DIET-PC boot images using the QEMU emulator binaries provided with the development VM.
Extract the assembly framework tarball in a user's home directory. If the user is not the root user (recommended), you must install sudo and configure /etc/sudoers to allow the user to run various commands as root (e.g. "dietpc ALL=(ALL) ALL", or see the Makefile for the exact commands you need to allow). If you use a development VM, all of this has been preconfigured for you.
The assembly framework will automatically download DIET-PC binaries for the architecture specified in ipkg.conf (by default, the same as the framework architecture) when you run "make fetch-ipks". See the framework README for more information on what to do after that.