New to create a custom Bazzite image and need help

[ToughDBlue]

I would like to build a custom Bazzite Gnome image that includes Brave Origin web browser and has Firefox removed. I've read people say that creating a custom image is easy but I find it difficult and confusing following the directions in Blue Build. I just simply want to have Brave Origin baked in and have Firefox removed which I'm sure should be easy but I'm very new to this. Could someone please assist me in setting this up?

[xynydev]

The template already includes Firefox removal as an example, and the dnf module docs show how the Brave Browser DNF repo can be added: https://blue-build.org/reference/modules/dnf/#add-repository-files

Brave Origin seems to be in beta, so based on their instructions this is what you would do with the module:

type: dnf
repos:
  files:
    - https://brave-browser-rpm-beta.s3.brave.com/brave-browser-beta.repo
install:
  packages:
    - brave-origin-beta
remove:
  packages:
    - firefox
    - firefox-langpacks

[ToughDBlue]

Your rant on the documentation has been noted, thank you for the valuable feedback. If you need any of those possibly rhetorical questions answered, feel free to nag me again, I will gladly answer.

Sorry if it came across as a rant instead of just communicating my experience and suggestions. Yes, those are actual questions I had while reading the documentation.
Regarding creating an ISO I copied the command to generate an ISO in a terminal with my repository but it says "sudo: Bluebuild: command not found"
What did I miss? This is the first step so not sure what I did wrong.

[xynydev]

BlueBuild is installed automatically if you are on a BlueBuild image. Otherwise, check out the installation instructions here: https://github.com/blue-build/cli

This is again something that should be documented more clearly, yes.

Also, if bluebuild works but sudo bluebuild doesn't, you can do which bluebuild and then run sudo <full-path-to-bluebuild-you-got-from-which>.

[xynydev]

The part about Custom Just Recipes confused me because it doesn't say what they are for, if I need them, or why I would use them. It says how to create one and the wording makes it sound like I have to create one as part of the process of making my own custom image.

All the "just" and "just recipe" and "ujust" and "blujust" stuff are something we inherit from Universal Blue. "Just" refers to https://just.systems/, which is kind of like a simplified make that many custom images turn into a system-wide command runner, by supplying an alias with a custom name that contains system-wide just "recipes" aka named scripts available as subcommands.

On Bazzite you have ujust, which you can run in the terminal to find out all the custom commands supplied by Bazzite. On Zirconium, which I use, there's zjust. On BlueBuild base images there's blujust, and when using the justfiles module on BlueBuild you can add your own just recipes to be available under the ujust alias on your custom Bazzite image.

So, no, you do not need to use them. You don't really even have to know exactly what they are or how they work. They are only useful if you want to ship a small script in your image that you can run manually from the terminal whenever you want, and that you can find easily even if you forget it's name.

Regarding the section on building an ISO I still don't know which method to choose. What does it mean to "You are actively building and publishing images"?

I assume you mean the "generate from a remote image" vs "generate from a recipe" as outlined here: https://blue-build.org/how-to/generate-iso/

Because you have the git repository of your custom image on GitHub and have builds enabled, you are actively building and publishing images. This is the default, as is said in the documentation. Your latest image seems to be at ghcr.io/toughdblue/bazzite-gnome

To generate an ISO, you should then run sudo bluebuild generate-iso --iso-name bazzite-gnome.iso image ghcr.io/toughdblue/bazzite-gnome.

Note that you do not have to generate an ISO if you already have Bazzite on your computer. If that is the case you can just run the auto-generated installation commands from the README of your repository: https://github.com/ToughDBlue/bazzite-gnome#installation

Generating from a local recipe is more of a power user thing for those who want to avoid relying on other people's servers to build and host their OS image, and wish to do it all locally on their machine. That is a supported use case, but not the default recommended way to do things.

What are custom modules? How do I know if I need one?

If you don't know whether you need a custom module, you probably do not need it to be honest.

A custom module is basically a script, but it slots right in with the built-in modules like dnf, fonts, default-flatpaks etc. etc. and can take in configuration in the form of a YAML object. You can share custom modules with other people to use.

If you're just one developer messing around with one image, and do not want to make building blocks for others to play with, you do not need to make custom modules.

How do I know if I need to sync my repository up with the template?

You really, most likely, most of the time, never, need to do this. You would only need to do this if you read on the blog for example that the template has been updated to contain a new GitHub Action that builds and publishes ISOs for you, and you wanted that feature in your repository as well.

We seldom update the template, though. If there was any time you needed to sync your repository up with the template, you would probably get know about it. And it would always be optional, only something that unlocks new features, not something that fixes a bug, because the template is intentionally minimal.

[xynydev]

I hope that this thread is indexed by search engines and can help others in the future. Also, thank you for the writing and thinking excersise, it definitely helps with improving the documentation and planning improvements to know what actual new users are struggling with and what they want.

[ToughDBlue]

Thank you for the detailed replies and information. Very helpful.