1.25. barebox Artifact Versioning

In addition to the usual barebox release (e.g. v2025.03.0), the version number can be extended to encode integration-specific version information:

  • When built from git, scripts/setlocalversion will factor in git revision information into the version string.

  • The EXTRAVERSION = in the top-level Makefile can be used to add a suffix to the version. This is useful if patches are applied on top of the tarball release.

  • The build host can set the BUILDSYSTEM_VERSION environment variable prior to executing make to encode a board support package version. This is useful to encode information about built-in environment and firmware.

1.25.1. Query from barebox

When CONFIG_BANNER is enabled, the version information will be printed to the console. From the shell, there is the version command for interactive use and the global.version and global.buildsystem.version Magic variables for use in scripts.

1.25.2. Query from OS

The barebox version (formatted as barebox-$version) can be queried after boot by different means:

  • If the OS is booted with device tree, barebox will fixup a /chosen/barebox-version property into the kernel device tree with the version string. Under Linux, this can be accessed at:

  • /sys/firmware/devicetree/base/chosen/barebox-version

  • /proc/device-tree/base/chosen/barebox-version

  • If the system is booted through barebox as EFI application (payload), a LoaderInfo EFI variable with the systemd vendor GUID will be set to the version string. Under Linux, the string is shown in bootctl output

1.25.3. Query without booting

If the barebox boot medium is known, bareboximd can be used to read the barebox Image MetaData (IMD), provided that barebox was compiled with CONFIG_IMD=y (and CONFIG_IMD_TARGET=y for the target tool):

linux$ bareboximd /dev/mmc2.boot0 -t release
2025.03.0-20250403-1

barebox$ imd /dev/mmc2.boot0 -t release
2025.03.0-20250403-1