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System Requirements

Target audience: Developers, Maintainers Goal: Hardware specifications for StageX development and release engineering.

Workload Types

Workload CPU RAM Disk Build Time
Single package 4+ cores 8 GB min, 16 GB rec 30 GB 10–30 min
Full tree (cold) 16+ cores 32 GB 650 GB SSD ~24 h
Full tree (preseeded) 16+ cores 32 GB 650 GB SSD varies

Cold build times assume a full make clean && make on 16 cores with 32 GB RAM. Preseeded builds (make preseed) reuse cached Docker layers, significantly reducing rebuild time for incremental changes.

Storage Breakdown (Full Tree)

After a complete full-tree build, storage consumption breaks down as follows:

Category Size Description
Source fetch (fetch/) ~25 GB Downloaded source tarballs and VCS checkouts
Build output (out/) ~X GB OCI layout artifacts (index.json, blob directories)
Docker build cache ~400–500 GB Cached OCI layers, BuildKit metadata
Digests (digests/) negligible Per-stage digest text files
Total ~650 GB

The Docker build cache is the dominant consumer. docker system prune -af recovers it when rebuilding from scratch is acceptable.

Maintainer-Specific

  • Multi-CPU reproduction: maintainers must have access to hardware from at least two different CPU vendors (e.g., AMD and Intel). The MAINTAINERS file records machine specifications for traceability.
  • GPG smart card: signing operations require a hardware-backed PGP smart card (YubiKey 5, NitroKey 3, or equivalent) with PIN protection and touch-required signing. See the Maintainer's Handbook for key management procedures.
  • Network: first build downloads all source tarballs (~25 GB). Subsequent builds reuse the fetch/ cache.

See Also