firmware/docs/building.md

Building your own packages

This builds from the stock FlashForge update package for your model — it does not replace it — but you no longer have to go and find one. It is pinned in versions.env and downloaded into vendor/ with everything else. Docker is the only requirement.

cp config.env.example config.env     # what to build, and what ships
make build                           # the firmware

There is nothing to edit in config.env for a default build; open it to change the model, the root password hash, or to leave a component out.

The package lands in work/out/. make release builds both models into dist/.

Requirements

Docker. That is the whole list — the build image carries openssl, tar, xz, unzip, python3, binutils, squashfs-tools and qemu-user-static, and every target runs inside it. make shell drops you into it. LOCAL=1 make <target> runs on the host instead.

The test targets get the docker socket mounted through, so they can start the replica as a sibling container — and so does make shell, which shares their run flags. So does make build, which is newer: payload.sh assembles the payload by installing the feed inside the replica, so the build lane needs the daemon too. Only the feed, the unpack and the pack run without it.

The pipeline

fetch-assets.sh  download the pinned sources into vendor/ -- Mainsail,
            HelixScreen, Moonraker, and the stock FlashForge package
unpack.sh   decrypt the stock .tgz for the boot images and the two facts
            pack.sh reads out of FlashForge's software component
payload.sh  install the .apk feed into work/modpayload-root/ to make the
            payload
pack.sh     generate runFirmwareExe.sh, tar, encrypt
            → work/out/<Model>-anvil-<date>.tgz

make build runs all four. It needs the .apk feed to exist first -- payload.sh assembles the payload by installing it -- so make packages comes before a cold make build; payload.sh says so if it is missing. Each is idempotent and safe to re-run.

There is no host-side check of the built file. make qa-replica has the printer perform its own install, and that is the gate.

Packages carry no FlashForge component at all — the installer and the payload, and nothing that lands on the firmware partition. The stock installer skips any component that is absent, so /usr/prog, the kernel, the rootfs image and the MCU/board firmware are left untouched — MCU flashing is the riskiest thing in a package and there is no reason to run it for a userspace mod. FULL=1 make <target> carries all four.

One build

There is one package: the forked Klipper with toolchanger support, Mainsail/Moonraker, ssh, and HelixScreen as the UI. bin/common.sh defaults the BUILD_* flags to exactly that, and config.env can override any of them if you want a piece left out.

There used to be a profiles/ directory choosing between builds — five of them at one point (ssh, web, full, helix) climbing one feature at a time, then two (probe, default). The intermediate rungs each cost their own flash-and-verify cycle while the recovery story stayed the same at every one of them (flash the stock package), so they bought caution nobody was spending; the last of them, probe, changed nothing on the printer and only wrote a diagnostic report to the USB stick, which was a bring-up aid rather than something to keep shipping. With one build left, the selection layer went with them.

make build                        # the firmware
make release                      # both models, into dist/
MODEL=Creator5 make build         # just the non-Pro

Cutting a release

Releases are built by .github/workflows/release.yml, on a pushed tag:

git tag v20260824-nova-kakhovka
git push origin v20260824-nova-kakhovka

The tag is v<YYYYMMDD>-<city>: the release date, and a Ukrainian city under occupation. Write docs/releases/<tag>.md before you tag -- a short paragraph on that city -- and the workflow appends it to the release notes; without one it publishes a bare line saying releases are named this way, and warns in the job log. Only the date reaches the package — FlashForge's installer reads the version field as a number and compares it against what is on the machine, so anvil-20260824 is what the filename says and the codename lives in the tag and the release title. A workflow_dispatch run has no tag; it builds and uploads the packages as a workflow artefact and publishes nothing.

Nothing about the release job is privileged. The stock FlashForge packages and the factory image it tests against are large but public (ghzserg/FF), pinned by sha256 in the workflow exactly as ci.yml pins them. It reads one optional secret, ROOT_PW_HASH, and deliberately has none set: released packages fall back to a random root password written to anvil-password.txt on the stick, which is the same thing a local build does and means no crackable hash ships inside a public package.

The job publishes only if the whole brick-safety suite passes on the replica, and then re-runs the end-to-end install against the exact dist/*.tgz files that get attached — not against a package built from the same tree, but those files. Releases are marked pre-release.

Publishing the feed

A release attaches two .tgz installers and one more file: reforge-apk-feed.tar.gz, which is the .apk feed those installers were built from, laid out the way the printer expects to fetch it. Unpacking that tarball into a web root is the whole publish step.

The URL printers ask is bin/common.sh's FEED_URL, and every build bakes it into anvil-core as /usr/data/anvil/etc/apk/repositories:

http://reforge.8941973.xyz/apk/mipsel_xburst2/anvil.adb

Serve the tarball's contents at http://reforge.8941973.xyz/apk/ — the arch directory comes out of the tarball — and printers pick the feed up with apk update && apk upgrade. The entry ends in the index file rather than naming a directory because that is how apk tells the two layouts apart: a .adb path is read as an index in place with the packages beside it, and anything else sends it looking for <url>/<arch>/APKINDEX.tar.gz.

From a local build, the same layout without the tarball:

./bin/publish-feed.sh                          # stage work/feed-site/ only
./bin/publish-feed.sh user@host:/srv/apk       # stage, then rsync it there

It uploads the packages first and the index last, on purpose: the index names every package by sha256, so a mirror carrying a new index and old packages hands printers a checksum for a file that is not there. Nothing is deleted at the far end. It refuses to publish an unsigned feed — ALLOW_UNSIGNED=1 to insist — because a printer verifies against the public key that shipped in its own anvil-core, and packages nothing signed are packages it will not install.

Plain HTTP, deliberately. apk's libfetch verifies TLS peers against a certificate bundle this printer does not have, and every package is signed — the signature, not the transport, is what decides whether a printer installs one. docs/notes/85-packaging.md has the detail.

The host does not exist yet. The URL ships anyway, and that is the point: a feed cannot tell a printer where the feed is, so the pointer has to travel in the .tgz. Machines installed today start fetching the day the host answers. Until then apk upgrade reports the repository as unavailable, and every other apk command — apk add ./file.apk included — is unaffected.

One kind of flag

There used to be two, and the distinction was the thing to keep straight. There is one now:

• BUILD_* decides what goes into a package. Read at build time only, defaulted in bin/common.sh, never present on the printer. (BUILD_TOOLCHANGE, BUILD_MAINSAIL, BUILD_MOONRAKER, BUILD_HELIX.)

The other kind was MOD_*: runtime switches written into /usr/data/anvil/anvil.conf, which the printer re-read at every boot. That file is gone, and so is every switch that lived in it — the whole of MOD_SPLASH, MOD_STARTUP, MOD_IMPORT, MOD_S6, the MOD_CAM_* camera settings, the NICE_* priorities, and before them MOD_WEB, MOD_CAM, MOD_UI, MOD_SSH and MOD_WIFI.

Every one of them defaulted to on, and what each described was a half-installed printer: Mainsail with no moonraker behind it, a screen dark on purpose, a camera installed and switched off, a root password deliberately not set on a machine whose recovery story is ssh. Nobody chose that state on purpose, and everything downstream had to carry a second answer for it.

So the components run because they are installed, and the settings that were worth keeping — the startup timeout, the camera's resolution, the nice values — are each stated once, in the service that uses them, under pkgs/anvil-core/payload/etc/s6-rc/source/. Changing one is an edit there and a rebuild, not a file on the printer.

To leave a piece out, leave it out — that is what the BUILD_* flags are for — or apk del it on the printer.

Upgrading a printer that has an anvil.conf needs nothing: the installer deletes it, edits and all, because nothing reads it any more and a file that still looks editable is worse than no file.

Third-party pieces are downloaded, not vendored

Mainsail, the HelixScreen build for this printer and Moonraker are large third-party trees, so the repo does not carry them — and never has, so there is nothing in the git history either. versions.env pins each one by version and sha256:

MAINSAIL_VERSION="v2.18.2"
HELIX_VERSION="v0.99.115-creator5.1"
MOONRAKER_VERSION="v0.9.3"

Moonraker is here because the printer's own is a 2022 build that predates the webcam enabled flag Mainsail filters on, so the camera panel never appears. BUILD_MOONRAKER=0 leaves the stock server alone.

bin/fetch-assets.sh downloads them into vendor/ (gitignored) and refuses anything whose sha256 does not match the pin. A cached file with the right hash is never re-downloaded, so it is a no-op on every build after the first. bin/build.sh calls it for you; make vendor pre-fetches everything.

To bump a version: edit versions.env — for HelixScreen that means both HELIX_VERSION and HELIX_FILE, which embeds the version in the filename — set the matching sha256 to SKIP, and run make vendor. It downloads the new file and prints its hash for you to paste back over the SKIP. With a stale hash left in place make vendor fails instead of printing anything.

Setting MAINSAIL_ZIP, HELIX_TGZ or MOONRAKER_TGZ in config.env points the build at your own local copy. It is still checksummed against versions.env, and on a mismatch fetch-assets.sh overwrites your file with the pinned release — SKIP re-downloads too. To build against your own file, put its sha256 in versions.env as well; only an exact match is left alone.

If the build asks for Mainsail, HelixScreen or Moonraker and the file is not there, it fails. It used to skip silently, which shipped a package with an empty web root and no way to notice.

The stock package is one of them

The stock FlashForge .tgz is pinned the same way, one per model:

STOCK_VERSION="1.9.7-1.2.9-20260810"
STOCK_FILE_CREATOR5PRO="Creator5Pro-$STOCK_VERSION.tgz"
STOCK_FILE_CREATOR5="Creator5-$STOCK_VERSION.tgz"

Nothing out of it ships — a release carries no FlashForge component at all — but unpack.sh reads two things out of it: the printer.base.cfg ours is diffed against, and the stock root hash the installer compares a live shadow to. So the build lane needs one and the packaging lane does not, which is why it has its own flag rather than a BUILD_* one: make packages still runs on a bare checkout with no firmware anywhere.

make build fetches the package for the model it is building; make vendor fetches both, about 186MB. They come from ghzserg/FF, the public archive Support already sends you to for the undo button — nothing proprietary is redistributed from this repo, and the sha256 is what makes building from somebody else's mirror safe.

Two differences from the pieces above. The release tag is a rolling R holding every FlashForge model at once, so the pin is the filename plus the sha256 — there is no per-release tag to move to, and a withdrawn asset breaks the fetch loudly rather than quietly. And STOCK_TGZ_CREATOR5PRO (or _CREATOR5) in config.env is the one override that is never overwritten: it names 93MB of firmware you downloaded by hand, so a hash mismatch skips it instead of replacing it. That also means nothing checks it — it is your file.

The root password

ROOT_PW_HASH in config.env is written straight into the shipped shadow file at build time — make passwd prompts for one and prints the hash, using the build image's python so the result is the same on every host. Leave it empty and the installer picks a random password on the printer instead, on the first install only, and writes it to anvil-password.txt on the USB stick it was flashed from. An update finds the printer already has a password — the random one, or one set by hand with passwd — and keeps it: the pre-block records the live hash before the stock installer replaces the shadow file, and the post-block puts it back.

The reason it works that way: a package is one file that many people flash, so any password baked into it would be the same on every machine. Generating it on the device is what makes it per-printer, and the stick is the one channel back to the person standing at the machine.

If the stick cannot be written, no password is set — a password nobody can read is no better than no access, and leaving a guessable one behind would be worse than saying so.

bin/pack.sh decides which of the two applies and bakes MOD_PW_AUTO into installer/runFirmwareExe.sh, which does the on-device half with the printer's own mkpasswd.

Two config files

config.env	The build config: which model, the root password hash, which components to leave out. Some of it ships. Carries no paths — every source is pinned in versions.env.
test.env	The replica config: the factory image, the partition sizes, an optional prebuilt printer image. None of it ships, ever.

Both are gitignored; copy the .example of each. CONFIG_ENV=<path> and TEST_ENV=<path> override the locations.

Layout

The repo has two lanes, and the directory a file sits in says which one it belongs to. Nothing from the test lane can reach a printer.

Ships — everything that ends up inside the .tgz and runs on the machine:

Files that run on the printer live with the RECIPE THAT OWNS THEM, and the directory inside that recipe says how they get there. Three names, no fourth (qa/static/test_recipe_layout.py holds this):

pkgs/<recipe>/payload/   staged into the .apk, laid out as it lands under
                        $MODDIR: payload/etc/s6-rc/source/nginx installs as
                        $MODDIR/etc/s6-rc/source/nginx and no recipe says so
pkgs/<recipe>/payload/prog/
                        package files the printer reads from somebody else's
                        filesystem: anvil-link-prog.sh symlinks them to the
                        absolute paths under /usr/prog that FlashForge's own
                        scripts open
pkgs/<recipe>/seed/      templated or seeded user state: not a package member,
                        because a member is overwritten on every upgrade
pkgs/<recipe>/control/   maintainer scripts, read INTO the .apk by name --
                        `postinst` becomes both post-install and post-upgrade,
                        because apk splits what opkg ran once

installer/              runFirmwareExe.sh -- THE installer. app_startup.sh
                        runs whatever it finds under this name in the package
                        it decrypted, so this file is the whole install;
                        pack.sh bakes the model gate into it

Which is to say:

pkgs/anvil-core/            what makes the machine ours, and nothing else
  payload/  anvil-env.sh      PATH/LD_LIBRARY_PATH/FF_PYTHON -- sourced
            bin/              ff-startup.py, ff_mcu_bringup.py, ffscreen.py,
                              wifi-action.sh
            etc/s6-rc/source/ one directory per service: wifi, wifi-dhcp,
                              nginx, moonraker, camera, klipper, ui, ntp,
                              mcu-bringup, ff-startup, ok-all
            nginx/nginx.conf
            bin/anvil-link-prog.sh  links the two below, and the configs, into
                              the absolute paths the stock scripts read
            prog/firmwareExe  the wrapper that replaces the stock binary
            prog/start.sh     replaces the stock Klipper launcher
pkgs/klipper/
  payload/  klipper/klippy/extras/  ff_*.py
pkgs/klipper-config/        every Klipper config the mod owns
  payload/  config/ff-*.cfg          the toolchanger's includes
            config/printer.base.cfg  the hub the rest hang off
            config/chamber/Creator5.cfg , Creator5Pro.cfg
                              both ship; anvil-link-prog.sh symlinks the one
                              app_startup.sh's MACHINE names
pkgs/moonraker/
  payload/  config/moonraker.conf   the server's own config, with the server
  seed/     moonraker-custom.conf   the user's own Moonraker settings
pkgs/helixscreen/
  payload/  helixscreen/config/printer_database.d/
                              the entry that makes it a toolchanger

The service definitions stay with anvil-core and do NOT move to the components they start, which looks inconsistent and is not. They are one source tree, and bin/payload.sh compiles the whole of it into a single s6-rc database on the build host. A tree split across packages would be a database assembled from whichever of them happened to be installed — and there is no compiler on the printer to assemble it with.

Builds it — host-side, never installed:

bin/            fetch-assets -> unpack -> patch -> pack.
                build-packages.sh is the packaging lane below, and the four
                steps need it to have run: payload.sh checks for the feed and
                refuses without one
versions.env    every third-party source, pinned by version and sha256 --
                including the stock FlashForge package, one per model
vendor/         where fetch-assets.sh caches them (gitignored), plus the
                apk-tools checkout -- pinned by git commit rather than
                sha256, because GitLab regenerates tag archives
config.env      the root password hash, the model, the BUILD_* flags
docker/         Dockerfile.build -- the container every target runs in
pkgs/           package recipes: one directory per component, each a
                build.sh producing a $MODDIR-relative tree and a pkg.conf
                naming it, plus whatever files of ours that component ships.
                `make packages` builds them into .apk files in work/packages/
                with a feed index, using apk's own mkpkg and mkndx. The release
                path depends on this: recipes resolve their build
                dependencies out of the feed, so `make packages` comes first.
                See docs/notes/85-packaging.md.
  3rdparty/       the recipes that build a pinned tarball and carry no files
                  of this repo -- thirty-four of the thirty-eight. They are
                  one level down so that `ls pkgs/` is the four components a
                  person edits rather than those four buried in the rest.
                  The line is mechanical, not editorial: a recipe belongs up
                  a level when it grows a payload/, prog/ or seed/, and
                  qa/static/test_recipe_layout.py enforces it in both
                  directions.
  lib.sh          the part of a cross-build every recipe shares: the
                  toolchains, the compiler wrappers and their ABI self-test,
                  configure/make/install, the build cache. A recipe that
                  needs something this cannot express should grow it --
                  qa/static/test_apk.py fails a recipe that goes around it.
  libsodium/      bin/payload.sh section 5d's build, moved. payload.sh runs it,
                  so the payload's copy and the packaged copy are one build.
  apk-tools/      the package manager itself, with zlib and openssl linked
                  in and one carried patch: apk resolves its database from
                  --root and / here is read-only, so the patch defaults that
                  database to $MODDIR while files still extract at /.

Tests it — never ships, and never touched by a build:

qa/             THE SUITE. static/ needs nothing but a checkout;
                replica/ needs docker and the firmware. `make qa`
tools/replica/  THE REPLICA, which is a build tool as much as a test one --
                bin/payload.sh assembles the payload inside it
  printer/        the machine: binfmt, the mount layout, Dockerfile.full and
                  the entrypoint that runs inside it on the printer's own
                  binaries -- SHELL, because the printer's busybox ash is the
                  only interpreter that matters there
  ffsim/          the host half: config loading and the docker plumbing
  sim-boot-screen.py      renders the boot frames, via the docker socket
  build-printer-image.sh  bakes the replica image, fetching the firmware itself
test.env        replica settings only -- the replica image, partition sizes
docs/           the documentation

Nothing left under test/ needs the firmware, or docker, or a network: the config gates need python3 and jinja2, and the rest exercise our own Python directly. It briefly had a directory of its own, test/unit, for exactly that distinction; with one maintainer who always has the firmware, that was a boundary kept in sync for nobody. Everything that needs a real machine is in qa/, and the machine itself is in tools/replica/.

The line between Python and shell here is not taste. Everything that runs on YOUR machine is Python; everything executed by the printer's own busybox under qemu stays shell, because the fact that it survives that is a large part of what the suite proves. See testing.md for why the host half moved.

Two things keep the boundary from eroding: the only files of ours that payload.sh copies into a package are the ones under a recipe's payload/, prog/ or seed/, and qa/replica/test_what_ships.py fails if any file on the installed printer is byte-identical to one in bin/ or docker/.

Rebuilding chelper

klippy/chelper/c_helper.so must be MIPS32r2 / nan2008 / o32 or klippy dies on import — pkgs/klipper refuses to seal a package with anything else, and test-install checks the copy that lands on the machine. Debian's cross-compilers cannot produce one (big-endian or legacy-nan); the Ingenic gcc 7.2.0 / glibc 2.29 toolchain for the X2000 can, and it is pinned by sha256 in versions.env and fetched into vendor/ like every other asset.

You do not rebuild it by hand any more. pkgs/klipper compiles the .so from the chelper sources of the very tree it is about to ship — the fork tarball pinned in versions.env, which since the recipe landed is the only source there is. One gate then runs inside the recipe, so make packages enforces it as well as a firmware build: the ELF-flag check above.

A symbol gate used to run beside it, comparing the .so's dynamic symbols against what klippy cdefs, because cffi resolves lazily -- a stale .so imports cleanly and dies only at Internal error during connect on the printer, with a traceback that names cffi and not the build. It is gone. What stands in its place is the compile-fresh rule itself: the .so is built from the chelper sources of the tree that ships, so a .so older than its klippy is not something this recipe can produce. Both a stale prebuilt .so (v0.12 binary under a v0.13 tree) and a package that skipped the fork entirely (v20260824-nova-kakhovka) have shipped, and that rule is what makes the third time structurally hard.

The docs site

These pages are the site at reforge.readthedocs.io. Read the Docs builds mkdocs.yml out of this repo on every push to master and once per tag, so a page and the code it describes move in the same commit and the same review, and an owner running an older package can read that package's docs from the version switcher rather than master's.

To preview locally:

python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -r docs/requirements.txt
.venv/bin/mkdocs serve          # http://127.0.0.1:8000
.venv/bin/mkdocs build --strict # what CI and RTD run

Three things about it are worth knowing before you add a page.

The nav is split by audience, and the split is the point. mkdocs.yml has a Using Reforge section for someone who owns the printer and a For contributors section for someone building or testing the firmware, with the docs/notes/ internals nested inside the second. A new page that is not in that nav is built but unreachable. Put it in the section its reader is standing in.

Links stay repo-relative. Write ../payload/klipper/extras/ff_tool.py and notes/40-offsets.md exactly as you would for someone reading the page on GitHub; hooks/mkdocs_readme.py turns the ones that leave docs/ into GitHub URLs at build time. Anchors use GitHub's slug rules, so #runout--clog for ## Runout / clog works in both places. The same hook generates docs/index.md from README.md on every build — edit the README, never that file, which is gitignored.

A dead link fails the build. CI's docs job and RTD both build with --strict, so renaming a file in payload/ breaks the build rather than leaving a doc pointing at nothing. It cannot check that the prose is still true; only a reader can.