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Before building Azure Linux, you need to prepare your system with the necessary prerequisites.

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System Requirements

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Hardware Requirements

  • CPU: Multi-core processor (recommended: 8+ cores for parallel builds)
  • RAM: Minimum 16GB (32GB+ recommended for full builds)
  • Disk Space: Minimum 100GB free space for full builds
  • Architecture: x86_64 or aarch64 (ARM64 requires ARM64 build machine)
Azure Linux compiles natively. An ARM64 build machine is required to create ARM64 packages and images.

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Supported Build Platforms

The Azure Linux toolkit is designed to run on:
  • Ubuntu 20.04 or later
  • Azure Linux itself
  • Other Linux distributions with similar package availability

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Getting the Source Code

1

Clone the repository

Clone the Azure Linux repository from GitHub:
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/azurelinux.git
cd azurelinux/toolkit
2

Checkout stable branch

Checkout the desired release branch. The 3.0-stable tag tracks the most recent successful release of the 3.0 branch:
git checkout 3.0-stable
3

Update tags (optional)

To ensure you have the latest stable tag:
git fetch --all --tags

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Understanding Branches and Tags

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Stable Branches

  • 3.0-stable - Latest known good build of Azure Linux 3.0
  • 2.0-stable - Latest known good build of Azure Linux 2.0
The stable tags always point to the latest validated build where all source and binary packages (SRPMs and RPMs) are published. As fixes are integrated, the tip of a branch may be temporarily unstable. The stable tag will remain fixed until the tip is validated, then it advances.

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Monthly Releases

Azure Linux is updated continuously, but aggregate releases are declared monthly and tagged in GitHub. These monthly builds are stable and their tags can be substituted for the 3.0-stable label.

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Alternate Branches

Alternate branches are not generally buildable because community builds require the SRPMs and/or RPMs to be published. At this time, published files are only available for the 2.0 and 3.0 branches.

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Working Directory

All subsequent build commands are assumed to be executed from inside the toolkit directory.
After cloning, your working directory structure should be: 
azurelinux/
├── toolkit/          # Build system (your working directory)
│   ├── Makefile
│   ├── scripts/
│   ├── resources/
│   └── imageconfigs/
├── SPECS/            # Package specifications
└── out/              # Build outputs (created during build)

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Next Steps

With prerequisites in place, you can now proceed to: You may also want to review the Build Variables Reference to understand available configuration options.

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