Florist: Scripts to generate immutable Gentoo images

What is Florist?

Florist is a set of scripts for building immutable Gentoo images, hosted on Codeberg at https://codeberg.org/Gardenhouse/florist. It has been reported that the project began as a private tool but has since grown into something more than a simple image builder — the repository now contains helpers and utilities beyond the core build flow. For more context and background, maintainers point to the Gardenhouse website and documentation.

How to use it

The tool is script-driven and intended to be run as root. Dependencies include erofs-utils (used to construct the final read‑only EROFS images) and optionally xdelta3 if you want delta updates for use with sysupdate. The build invocation is straightforward: ./florist build -o . Documentation has been moved to https://gardenhouse.pinkro.se, which is the recommended starting point for configuration details and supported profiles.

Why it matters

Immutable images are a current hot topic — reproducibility, security, and simple rollbacks are all on the table. Florist slots into that conversation for Gentoo users who prefer source-based control but want the operational benefits of a read-only image. It’s not a silver bullet, of course, but the conversion of a private workflow into a sharable project is the emotional core here: a small, practical tool liberated for the community to use, inspect, and improve.

Sources: codeberg.org, Lobsters