ZeroTier has been merged into the official package repository and can be selected using the opkg package management tool.

ZeroTier One is a program to create a global provider-independent virtual private cloud. This project offers OpenWrt packages for ZeroTier.

Download the prebuild package and copy it onto your OpenWrt installation, preferably into the /tmp folder.

Then install the ipk package file:

opkg install zerotier_*.ipk

Now enable ZeroTier:

uci set zerotier.sample_config.enabled='1'
uci commit zerotier

Now start ZeroTier

/etc/init.d/zerotier start

To include ZeroTier One into your OpenWrt image or to create an .ipk package (equivalent to Debians .deb files), you have to build an OpenWrt image.

To build OpenWrt on Debian, you need to install these packages:

sudo apt-get install subversion g++ zlib1g-dev build-essential git python
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev gawk gettext unzip file libssl-dev wget

Now prepare OpenWrt:

git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt
cd openwrt

./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a

Now you can insert the zerotier package using a package feed (see Add package by feed) or add the package manually (see Add package by hand).

A feed is the standard way packages are made available to the OpenWrt build system.

Put this line in your feeds list file (e.g. feeds.conf, or feeds.conf.default)

src-git zerotier https://github.com/mwarning/zerotier-openwrt.git

Update and install the new feed

./scripts/feeds update zerotier
./scripts/feeds install zerotier

Now continue with the building packages section (see Building Packages).

git clone https://github.com/mwarning/zerotier-openwrt.git
cp -rf zerotier-openwrt/zerotier package/
rm -rf zerotier-openwrt/

Now continue with the building packages section (see Building Packages).

Configure packages:

make menuconfig

Now select the appropiate "Target System" and "Target Profile" depending on what target chipset/router you want to build for. Also mark the ZeroTier package under Network ---> VPN ---> <*> zerotier.

Now compile/build everything:

make -j8

The images and all *.ipk packages are now inside the bin/ folder, including the zerotier package. You can install the ZeroTier .ipk on the target device using opkg install <ipkg-file>.

For details please check the OpenWrt documentation.

For a release, it is useful the build packages at a bulk for multiple targets:

#!/bin/sh

# dump-target-info.pl is used to get all targets configurations:
# https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=blob;f=scripts/dump-target-info.pl

./scripts/dump-target-info.pl architectures | while read pkgarch target1 rest; do
  echo "CONFIG_TARGET_${target1%/*}=y" > .config
  echo "CONFIG_TARGET_${target1%/*}_${target1#*/}=y" >> .config
  echo "CONFIG_PACKAGE_example1=y" >> .config

  # Debug output
  echo "pkgarch: $pkgarch, target1: $target1"

  make defconfig
  make -j4 tools/install
  make -j4 toolchain/install

  # Build package
  make package/zerotier/{clean,compile}

  # Free space (optional)
  rm -rf build_dir/target-*
  rm -rf build_dir/toolchain-*
done