Custom Fedora/CentOS bootc base container images

The goal eventually is to support a workflow to turn an ordinary application container into a bootable container by, for instance, installing a kernel and bootc:

FROM quay.io/fedora/fedora:40
RUN dnf -y install kernel bootc

However, at the current time, there is significant internal usage of the OSTree technology included and required in the base images. This is slated to change over time, see bootc base images as well as bootc PR 215 which will make it much, much easier to supply custom arbitrary content.

Forking the existing source

The source definitions of the base images are fully open and you are welcome to fork them. See the source code linked from the Base images section for more details. However, the current build process is somewhat special and not highly suited for deep customization.

Note that there is a not-small set of significant details in the build process and forking will mean losing out on important changes to the existing base images.

Forking the experimental "container-native" base sources

There is a Base Image (Experimental) build git repository which is much more "container native" and should with some more work be better suited for a model where it is e.g. used as a git submodule or equivalent.

It’s much easier to inject arbitrary code in the middle of the build process with this base source, without significant restrictions.