Package build and integration instructions are usually written as code. It's hard to analyse code and get any interesting info out of it. It's hard to share fragments of code and expect them to still work.

A well-defined, structured format for build and integration instructions would allow developers and integrators to share, analyse and use packaging rules and build instructions, independently of any distribution.

The Baserock definitions format is a YAML format that can describe how to build a whole Linux system from scratch. It's been developed over the past 4 years. I am going to talk about the choices behind it, compromises, the pain points, and I will compare it with the other options we have for describing packaging rules.