ebuild — Unified Embedded Build System

ebuild is a unified embedded build system written in Python. You describe a project in a single build.yaml; ebuild resolves the dependency and toolchain graph and drives an underlying build backend, then extends into firmware and system-image workflows for embedded targets. It is part of the EmbeddedOS (EoS) ecosystem. (ebuild here is the EoS build tool and is unrelated to Gentoo's ebuild format.)

⚡ Quick Demo

New here? See demo.md — a 5-minute, self-contained walkthrough that lists the prerequisites (Python, gcc, and the ninja pip package), then builds and runs a tiny "thermostat" C program end-to-end via ebuild build. A troubleshooting appendix covers no-root / PEP 668 environments and building without a system compiler.

Features

Observed in the source tree:

• Backend dispatch — auto-detects the project's build system and dispatches to CMake, Make, Meson, Cargo, or Kbuild, or generates a Ninja build (ebuild/build/dispatch.py, ebuild/build/ninja_backend.py). Per the package metadata, its target scope also includes Buildroot, Zephyr, FreeRTOS, and NuttX.
• Package graph — install and list project packages (ebuild add, ebuild list-packages).
• Firmware & flashing — build RTOS firmware and flash images to targets (ebuild firmware, ebuild flash; ebuild/firmware/).
• System images — root filesystem, kernel, and disk-image assembly (ebuild system; ebuild/system/).
• Project scaffolding — generate projects and boards from templates (ebuild new, ebuild generate-project, ebuild generate-board, ebuild generate-boot).
• Layers & recipes — reusable board/OS composition under layers/ and recipes/.

What's inside

Path	Contents
ebuild/	The Python package: cli/, build/, core/, system/, firmware/, deps/, packages/, plugins/, eos_ai/
core/	Native support components (e.g. eboot/)
examples/	hello_world, linux_image, multi_target, rtos_firmware, cortex_r5_safety, eradar360, with_packages
templates/	Project/board templates used by the generators
recipes/, layers/	Reusable build recipes and board/OS layers
hardware/	Board/hardware definitions
sdk/	SDK generation support
tools/	Helper scripts
docs/	Documentation (published with MkDocs)

Install

Requires Python 3.8+.

pip install -e .        # from the repo root
# or:
./install.sh            # puts the 'ebuild' command on your PATH
./install.sh --check    # verify the installation

Runtime dependencies (click, pyyaml, ninja) are installed automatically. Note the ninja pip package is required — a system ninja binary alone is not enough, because ebuild invokes python -m ninja.

Usage

ebuild info             # show what ebuild parsed from build.yaml
ebuild build            # resolve and build (auto-detects the backend)
ebuild clean            # remove build artifacts
ebuild --version

Additional commands: configure, install, add, list-packages, pipeline, system, firmware, flash, new, generate-project, generate-board, generate-boot, analyze, setup, and the repos group (status, update, set-url, set-branch, link, unlink). Run ebuild --help for the full list.

Test

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest                  # configuration in pytest.ini

Documentation

Docs live under docs/ and are published with MkDocs (mkdocs.yml): https://embeddedos-org.github.io/ebuild/.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Part of embeddedos-org.