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Pedro Henrique Penna (ppenna) merged 1 commit into from
Oct 10, 2026
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doc: document native guest builds and their download cache #463

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19 changes: 19 additions & 0 deletions doc/build.md
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Expand Up @@ -19,6 +19,25 @@ Build every guest artifact, including the Ubuntu EROFS distro layer, with:
python3 scripts/nvx.py build-guest --guest all
```

On a Linux host, `--native` builds the kernel and the selected Alpine or Ubuntu
initramfs without Docker, using the host packages that
[Setup](setup.md#prerequisites) lists. Azure Linux builds only in Docker, so a
native build rejects `--guest azurelinux` and `--guest all`. Because only
`--guest all` builds the Ubuntu EROFS distro layer, build it after a native
build with `build-distro-layer`, described below.

```bash
python3 scripts/nvx.py build-guest --native
python3 scripts/nvx.py build-guest --native --guest ubuntu
```

The native build keeps the Linux archive, the Ubuntu Base archive, and the
supplemental Ubuntu packages under `downloads/` in the cache directory,
`.cache/` or `$NVX_CACHE_DIR`. It reuses a file there whose SHA-256 matches its
pin and downloads it again otherwise, so staging the pinned archives in that
directory lets a host without access to their download servers build natively.
The Alpine minirootfs and packages still come from the Alpine servers.

The OpenVMM restore step excludes the compatibility IGVM artifact, which NVX
does not build or package, so builds do not depend on unrelated upstream
workflow artifacts.
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