KOS Studio supports collaboration both within and between teams. KOS uses a modular architecture where applications are packaged as reusable KABs, and can be incorporated into multiple projects. This assemble architecture promotes software reuse, simplifies maintenance, and facilitates collaboration across teams and organizations.

During development, developers can use locally built KABs to construct and test manifests on their own machines. For longer-term projects, KABs can be published to an organization’s version-controlled artifact storage, where they become available to other team members and projects.

Organizations can also publish KABs to the Marketplace, making them accessible to authorized external organizations. This enables teams to share reusable software components while maintaining version control and access management.

For projects where you want to allow a third party to add software components, such as a CMS team updating seasonal content assets, you can use Chained Manifests. The primary software team can define “Chained Section References” within the original manifest on KOS Studio, which act as authorized sections for additional content. Approved third parties can plug their own content into these sections, but they cannot modify or replace the verified base software. This ensures the integrity of the primary release, while safely enabling external contributions.

For more information on chained manifests, please refer to this article: Chained Manifest

To inspect the software currently running on a device, connect to it using KOS Studio and open the “Manifest Viewer” connection tool. This tool provides a live view of the active manifest, displaying the specific KOS version alongside every KAB currently deployed, including their individual versions and UUID for precise identification.

KOS Studio is designed as a collaborative development environment. All instances of KOS Studio within an organization are synchronized in real time, allowing developers, testers, and administrators to work from a shared view of images, artifacts, devices, and configurations.

Key collaboration features include:

• Real-time synchronization – Changes made to images, manifests, artifacts, tags, and related resources are immediately visible to other authorized users within the organization. This helps teams stay aligned and reduces configuration drift.
• Shared images and manifests – Teams can collaborate on the same image definitions and deployment configurations. Developers can create specialized child images using Image Inheritance while continuing to track updates from a shared reference image.
• Simplified developer onboarding – Images can be configured to use relative paths within a source repository through Team Direct Shortcuts. When a new developer joins the project, they simply provide the location of the source tree on their local machine, allowing the image to run without additional setup or modification.
• Artifact sharing – Teams can share KABs through organizational artifact storage. This allows developers to build on each other’s work while maintaining version control and traceability.
• Tags and organization tools – Tags can be used to automatically group related devices, images, and resources, making it easier for users in different roles to locate the assets relevant to their work.
• Cross-organization collaboration – Users can belong to multiple organizations simultaneously, making it easier to work with contractors, suppliers, customers, and other external partners.

Whether a team is developing software, validating releases, managing hardware deployments, or coordinating with external partners, KOS Studio provides a shared workspace that helps keep everyone working from the same source of truth.

Software is packaged as KOS Archive Bundles (KAB), an uncompressed zip file with a digital signature. KABs are designed to be immutable, deterministic, and secure to ensure the integrity of code on the device. KOS utilizes an assemble architecture, where KABs are individually built, and organized to be deployed onto a device. This allows for modular updates and addition to the system, without the need to rebuild the entire system.

Deployment occurs through Images, which are essentially virtual machines that specify what runs on a machine. These are governed by a Manifest, a signed blueprint that defines the specific KABs and KOS version to be used. Images can be run on a simulator on localhost, or on physical hardware. For successful deployment to hardware, the device must first be preloaded with a KOS bootloader, which is available for various boards, including Raspberry Pi, at kosdev.com.

To maintain team-wide consistency, KOS Studio uses Image Inheritance. This allows developers to create child images that inherit all properties from a parent image while overriding specific components. It is recommended to follow this structure:

• Reference image: This is the parent image containing the published artifacts. This serves as the image that QA tests and that is ultimately released to production.
• Team Images (eg: Java or UI Images): Specialized child images that inherit everything from the reference image, but replace specific KABs with local artifacts. This allows teams to quickly develop and test modifications without affecting others.

Here is an article on image collaboration which explains further Image Collaboration.

KOS Studio is an application that provides a comprehensive suite of development tools to configure and deploy software for single-use devices running KOS. While KOS serves as the underlying operating system, Studio provides the necessary toolchain for testing and deployment. Developers use their preferred IDE for coding and testing, while utilizing Studio to manage virtual machines (Images), run code, view logs, and other advanced debugging tools.

Key features of KOS Studio include:

• Real Time Collaboration: All data is synchronized at real time, including image data and shared artifacts. Artifacts can be shared through centralized artifact management and the marketplace.
• Hardware Configuration: Studio enables users to toggle between running images on a local simulator and physical hardware effortlessly.
• Testing to Production: Studio streamlines the path to production by allowing testing images to be packaged into immutable, signed releases.

Step-by-step tutorials are available to assist everyone from administrators to developers in navigating the environment.

Running and installing an image serve different purposes within the development lifecycle.

Running an image is intended for testing and validation. When an image is run, KOS temporarily deploys the specified software configuration to the target device or simulator while preserving the previous system state. This allows developers, testers, and operators to quickly evaluate changes without permanently modifying the device. Once the run session ends, KOS automatically rolls the system back to its prior state, ensuring experiments and tests do not affect the installed software.

Installing an image is a permanent deployment operation. When an image is installed, its software configuration becomes the active system on the device and remains in place across reboots and power cycles. The installed image continues running until it is replaced by another installation or temporarily overridden by a run operation.

A common workflow is to run an image repeatedly during development and QA testing, then install the same image once it has been validated.