Whonix on Mac M1 (ARM) - Development Discussion

Development
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build from source code:

You’re the first one since 2019 when unified ova’s were introduced to attempt a build from source code combining cli + xfce.

There’s a lot complexity to manage and several goals that aren’t easily combined.

  • fewer build commands
  • simpler build commands
  • unified ova
  • optimization of build speed, upload time
  • support building singular VMs (for example build gateway only, not workstation)
  • multiple target, platform support (VirtualBox, KVM, raw)
  • creation of hashsum files, torrent files, digital signatures
  • fully automated builds and uploads
  • no manual modifications by images by hand by running manual commands, all must be source code based

The prepare-release script does nothing when building the gateway. I designed it to run only when building the workstation because then both VMs can. be combined into a single image.

During the workstation build command, there’s no information on how a previous gateway build was done. (cli vs xfce)

This is the problem:

   if [ "${dist_build_type_long}" = "workstation" ]; then
      vm_multiple=true
      ## dist_build_desktop could be KDE, CLI, Xfce, RPi or CUSTOM
      vm_names_to_be_exported="Whonix-Gateway-${dist_build_desktop} Whonix-Workstation-${dist_build_desktop}"
   fi

Variable dist_build_desktop is either Xfce or CLI. Mixing isn’t supported. And even if supported, might be complicated to document.

downloadable version:

Quote Whonix for Windows, macOS, Linux inside VirtualBox

(Because separate cli and xfce ova’s exist.)

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