Tools

Many open source and publicly available tools and packages have been used for the creation of BCLD. We are extremely grateful to all the developers who have worked on Debian and Ubuntu projects. We recognize the care, passion and time it takes to keep these packages updated and secure. Aside from all these packages, certain third-party applications have also been used to manage BCLD. This page contains some important tools that work efficiently with BCLD:

1. Coding
2. Writing
3. Flashing
4. Remoting

Writing code for BCLD

• A large portion of the BCLD repository consists of Shell scripts.
• BCLD was developed within Quintor.
• At Quintor, two popular development environments are Microsoft Visual Studio Code and JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA.
• For the development of BCLD, however, no more than gedit was used!
• gedit contains an amazing amount of integrated plugins which can be installed from most default package repositories.

Writing documents for BCLD

• The remaining part of BCLD files (that are not scripts) consists of text files (configuration files) and Markdown files.
• This BCLD Wiki also consists entirely of Markdown files.
• These files can be edited in Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ IDEA using Markdown plugins.
• However, gedit was used during the development of BCLD, which does not come with an integrated Markdown plugin.
• This problem was solved using MarkText, a simple but beautiful Markdown editor.

Beware when using MarkText on some Markdown files, as it may inject a lot of whitespaces and tabs due to Markdown formatting.

It may also add or remove indentation.

Flashing the BCLD-USB image

• To flash BCLD, it is recommended to use Startup Disk Creator on Ubuntu.
• If not available, use Balena Etcher (Linux) or Rufus (Windows).
• Other programs such as UNetBootin and mkusb do not work optimally and have been known to cause issues.
• Write the IMG file to a USB.
• If desired, modify the bcld.cfg on the USB.
• Check if UEFI and Secure Boot are enabled on the machine.
• Boot the machine from USB in Legacy, UEFI or Secure Boot mode.

Remote access to BCLD

• The TEST model for BCLD allows for remote SSH access.
• When building your own BCLD image, you can build a TEST model by setting BCLD_MODEL to TEST.
• Remmina or mRemoteNG are useful tools for managing remote BCLD sessions.