Apertis is a Debian derivative distribution geared towards the creation of product-specific images for ARM (both the 32bit ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 versions using the hardfloat ABI) and Intel x86-64 (64-bit) systems.

Apertis v2020.1 is the second stable release of the Apertis v2020 release flow. Apertis is committed to maintaining the v2020 release stream until September 2021.

This Apertis release is built on top of Debian Buster with several customisations.

Test results for the v2020.1 release are available in the following test reports:

Point releases including all the security fixes accumulated will be published quarterly, up to v2020.7.

Release flow

  • 2019 Q3: v2020dev0
  • 2019 Q4: v2020pre
  • 2020 Q1: v2020.0
  • 2020 Q2: v2020.1
  • 2020 Q3: v2020.2
  • 2020 Q4: v2020.3
  • 2021 Q1: v2020.4
  • 2021 Q2: v2020.5
  • 2021 Q3: v2020.6
  • 2021 Q4: v2020.7

Release downloads

Apertis v2020.1 images
Intel 64-bit minimal target base SDK SDK
ARM 32-bit (U-Boot) minimal target
ARM 64-bit (U-Boot) minimal

The Intel minimal and target images are tested on the reference hardware (MinnowBoard MAX), but they can run on any UEFI-based x86-64 system. The basesdk and sdk images are tested under VirtualBox.

Apertis v2020 repositories

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/apertis/ v2020 target development sdk hmi
deb https://repositories.apertis.org/apertis/ v2020-security target development sdk hmi

Changes

This is a point release in the stable cycle, only security fixes and small enhancements are aimed at this release stream.

This release includes:

  • the security updates from Debian Buster
  • the latest LTS Linux kernel on the 5.4.x series
  • HTTPS support in apertis-hawkbit-agent
  • a fix for apertis-update-manager to avoid initiating a rollback on crashes not due to the update process
  • an AppArmor profile fix for Bluez to access /dev/hidraw devices
  • updated support for ed25519 signatures in OSTree
  • expanded static delta signature support in OSTree
  • FIT support in U-Boot
  • completely disabled the GPL-3 “part” plugin in UDisks2
  • completely disabled the mdraid and crypto plugins in UDisks2
  • a new libwpa-client-dev packge to access the hostapd control protocol
  • a fix for UPower when starting up on a empty /var
  • dropped unsupported architectures from binutils and the GCC cross-compiler
  • fixes for Debos to avoid mangling /etc/resolv.conf
  • GitLab-CI image building pipeline

Deprecations and ABI/API breaks

The GitLab-CI image building pipeline will replace the Jenkins pipeline

The GitLab-CI imabe building pipeline is now available on the v2020 branch as well. It currently co-exist with the Jenkins pipeline which is still the reference pipeline for this Apertis release.

During the v2020.2 cycle the project will evaluate having the GitLab-CI pipeline as the reference pipeline, putting the Jenkins pipeline into maintenance mode.

Infrastructure

Apertis Docker registry

The Apertis Docker registry stores Docker images in order to provide a unified and easily reproducible build environment for developers and services.

As of today, this includes the apertis-image-builder, apertis-package-builder, apertis-package-source-builder, apertis-testcases-builder and apertis-documentation-builder Docker images.

Apertis infrastructure tools

The Apertis v2020 infrastructure repository provides packages for the required versions of ostree-push and ostree for Debian Buster:

deb https://repositories.apertis.org/infrastructure-v2020/ buster infrastructure

Images

Image daily builds, as well as release builds can be found at:

https://images.apertis.org/

Image build tools can be found in the Apertis tools repositories.

Infrastructure overview

The Image build infrastructure document provides an overview of the image building process and the involved services.

Known issues