Network operating systems commonly provide a stable userspace platform for networking devices. Integration of userspace applications as well as low-level hardware support are handled by firmware build systems.

Existing build systems for network operating systems display numerous limitations by either targeting only distinct types of devices, using cumbersome methodologies to add additional features or offering insufficient capabilities regarding what to include in the firmware image. In this presentation, we provide an overview of these limitations and how we mitigate them with Replica.one, an Open Source firmware builder which targets the entire networking stack.

We will focus on the solution's optimization features, its capability to generate firmware for diverse classes of devices across the entire networking stack, and the flexibility to select the desired operating system between various Linux-based distributions.