108 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
108 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
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Announcing lorax-0.1
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"I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees."
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(and images)
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WHAT IS IT
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----------
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lorax is a replacement for the buildinstall maze of scripts and tools we
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have in anaconda. It is written in Python in the hopes that it will be
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easier to hook in to programs like pungi.
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It also moves the tools that generate installation images in to a separate
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project from anaconda itself.
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WHAT DOES IT REPLACE?
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---------------------
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All of these things from the anaconda source tree:
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scripts/buildinstall
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scripts/buildinstall.functions
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scripts/makestamp.py
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scripts/maketreeinfo.py
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scripts/mk-images
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scripts/mk-images.alpha
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scripts/mk-images.efi
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scripts/mk-images.ia64
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scripts/mk-images.ppc
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scripts/mk-images.s390
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scripts/mk-images.x86
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scripts/scrubtree
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scripts/upd-instroot
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utils/trimpciids
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utils/mk-s390-cdboot.c
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utils/filtermoddeps
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utils/geninitrdsz.c
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utils/genmodinfo
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utils/modlist
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WHY REWRITE BUILDINSTALL
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------------------------
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The buildinstall scripts were magic and maintaining them was sort of an art
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form. The entire collection of tools used in a buildinstall run are written
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in bash, Perl, Python, and C. Maintenance nightmare.
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The way packages were specified for inclusion in the instroot as well as
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what files were to be kept or removed were specified in the upd-instroot
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script. Again, difficult maintenance.
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Lorax is intended to mostly be a drop-in replacement for buildinstall. The
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frontend program accepts the same command line arguments as buildinstall,
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but all of the work is done through the pylorax Python module rather than
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separate scripts or programs.
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MAJOR CHANGES
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-------------
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Aside from offering a standalone tool that replaces the buildinstall script
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collection and being written in Python, lorax introduces some policy changes
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for how install images are generated.
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(a) Keep everything by default, remove listed items.
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In the buildinstall scripts, we have the KEEPFILE set of variables that
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define what files (by wildcard or explicit names) we want to keep in a
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particular image. The standard policy for buildinstall is to unpack a set
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of packages (listed in PACKAGES variables) and then remove everything not
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explicitly listed in a KEEPFILE variable. This aspect causes a lot of
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maintenance headaches.
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The lorax approach is to trust yum and package maintainers to give us what
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we want. We define a set of packages we want for the image using
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configuration files in /etc/lorax. Using yum, the packages are installed to
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the staging root tree. Then tree scrubbing takes place, which is
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customizable by the user. So, the default policy of lorax is to keep
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everything a package gives us and only remove things explicitly listed for
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the scrub operation.
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(b) Maintain image building tools as a separate project.
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If release engineering needs to regenerate trees for a nightly build because
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a problem was encountered during image building, that requires a new
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anaconda build to show up. Lorax allows customization through configuration
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files and in cases where bugs are discovered in it, a new release can be
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made independent of anaconda.
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Lorax can (and should) be maintained jointly by releng and the anaconda team.
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(c) Logic is in the pylorax module.
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Pungi may ultimately import the pylorax module to generate images rather
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than running the lorax command line tool. Better integration in to Pungi
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is a goal of lorax.
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And there you have it. Lorax.
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--
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David Cantrell <dcantrell@redhat.com>
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