Building and Testing

Building and testing

ZacOS 9 is C and C++ (wlroots, Qt 6), built with Meson on Debian 13 (trixie). Other distributions have different library versions and are not supported for building.

Build

sudo apt install git build-essential devscripts
git clone https://github.com/chromasystemprofessional/Zac-OS-9.git
cd Zac-OS-9
sudo apt build-dep ./
meson setup build
ninja -C build
meson test -C build

On Windows, use WSL 2 with Debian 13. run.cmd builds and starts a desktop window; vm.cmd runs an ISO in a virtual machine.

Try a change without an ISO

scripts/dev-boot.sh

It puts the current tree on top of the last ISO build's system in an overlay. The boot menu needs a real ISO, but the desktop and programs do not.

Build packages and an ISO

scripts/build-debs.sh
sudo scripts/build-iso.sh

The ISO build needs sudo, network access and about 10 GB free; the first run takes 20–40 minutes. It writes:

build/iso/zacos9-VERSION-amd64.iso

The full packaging notes are in docs/packaging.md.

Tests

meson test -C build

A few tests need a display, a printer fixture or external tools and are skipped when those are absent. Run a single test with:

meson test -C build --print-errorlogs NAME

Contributing

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before changing code: one logical change per pull request, tests, and the style rules. ARCHITECTURE.md maps the processes and folders.

Translations are handled separately; see Languages and translations.

Licensing

ZacOS 9 is GPL-3.0. It contains no Apple code, fonts, icons or sounds. Do not add Apple material or ROMs to the repository or wiki.