KIWI—Next Generation

This is a rewrite of the former KIWI appliance builder which you can find here: https://github.com/openSUSE/kiwi.

Contents

• Motivation
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Supported Distributions
• Contributing
• Packaging and Versioning
• Documentation

Motivation

During the last years KIWI has evolved a lot. Many features were added, even some which are not in use anymore because new technologies made them obsolete. There is a lot of legacy code in KIWI to support older distributions. In order to become free from legacy code the decision to provide a new version which can co-exist with the former implementation was made.

However, the current design and the lack of tests in core parts of the former code base, basically prevents a major refactoring as I see it required. Because of that, a rewrite of KIWI with a stable version in the background seems to be the best way.

Users will be able to use both versions in parallel. Also the new KIWI will be fully compatible with the current format of the image description. This means, you can build an image from the same image description with the old and the new KIWI, if the new KIWI supports the distribution and all features the image description has configured.

Installation

packages for the new kiwi version are provided at the openSUSE buildservice

$ zypper in python3-kiwi

Quick Start

Along with the appliance builder there is also a github project hosting example image descriptions. The following shows how to build your first image.

$ git clone https://github.com/SUSE/kiwi-descriptions

$ kiwi --type vmx system build \
       --description kiwi-descriptions/suse/x86_64/suse-leap-42.1-JeOS \
       --target-dir /tmp/myimage

$ cd /tmp/myimage

$ qemu -drive \
    file=LimeJeOS-Leap-42.1.x86_64-1.42.1.raw,format=raw,if=virtio

Supported Distributions

This version of KIWI is targeted to build appliances for distributions which are equal or newer compared to the following list:

• SUSE Linux Enterprise 12
• Red Hat Enterprise 7
• openSUSE 13.2
• SUSE Leap 42
• SUSE Tumbleweed

For anything older please consider to use the former kiwi version v7.x.x

Contributing

The core appliance builder is developed in Python and follows the test driven development rules. The XML, schema, and stylesheets are taken from the old version of KIWI. Also the entire boot code (written in bash) is taken from the old KIWI codebase.

The Python project uses virtualenv to setup a development environment for the desired Python version. The following procedure describes how to create such an environment for Python 3.4. Although it's targetted for openSUSE, it's very similar for other distributions with minor corrections:

$ sudo zypper in python3-virtualenv
$ sudo zypper in python3-devel
$ sudo zypper in python3-bumpversion
$ sudo zypper in python3-Sphinx

$ virtualenv-3.4 .env3

Once the development environment exists it needs to be activated and initialized with the project required Python modules:

$ . .env3/bin/activate

$ pip3.4 install -r .virtualenv.dev-requirements.txt

$ ./setup.py develop

The develop target of the setup.py script automatically creates the application entry point called kiwi, which allows to simply call the application from the current code base

$ kiwi --help

In order to leave the development mode just call

$ deactivate

Packaging and Versioning

The version schema is based on python's bumpversion and follows the standard rules as shown below.

$ bumpversion [patch | minor | major]

The creation of rpm package sources has to be done by calling the following make target:

$ make build

The sources are collected below the dist/ directory. In there you will find all required files to submit a package to the open build service or just build it with rpmbuild

Documentation

The documentation is implemented as manual pages based on Sphinx using the ReST markup. In order to build the manual pages for testing just call:

$ cd doc
$ make man