The Fedora 45 Sausage Factory
This technical walkthrough details the Fedora Linux distribution's build process, explaining how source code is transformed into installable artifacts like ISOs and container images. It outlines the role of Git repositories, the 'fedpkg' CLI tool, and the Koji build system in maintaining reproducible releases.
Why it matters
It provides transparency into the open-source software supply chain, which is critical for security and reliability in Linux-based systems.
This is a walkthrough of how Fedora turns source code and packages into the artifacts you download and install. It follows the a package from a packager's git push to a composed release: ISOs, cloud images, container images, and OSTree deployments.
The walkthrough describes how the Fedora 'sausage' is created as of Fedora 45, things change all the time; I hope to have time to update this document every cycle or every few cycles of Fedora releases so there's both history and people can find up to date information.
In fact this document is currently still living as Fedora 45 has not been released yet so this post likely will get updated until the release. There's a few change proposals in flight that change some of the bits and bobs here. Specifically how the boot.iso is produced which is a decently large part of this post.
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