Lorax is a set of tools used to create bootable images.
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David Cantrell 81e7702393 Introduce class Lorax and class InstRoot.
The lorax driver program will instantiate the Lorax class, which
drives the creation of the install images.  The InstRoot class is
the main object that represents the contents of the instroot
image (the tree that boot and stage2 images are made from).
2008-10-09 17:04:13 -10:00
etc Forgot to delete etc/packages.ppc64 2008-10-04 17:57:12 -10:00
rewrite Removed more things from upd-instroot that have been moved over. 2008-10-08 13:48:42 -10:00
share Add dogtail and selinux config files to /usr/share/lorax. 2008-10-05 14:33:27 -10:00
src Introduce class Lorax and class InstRoot. 2008-10-09 17:04:13 -10:00
.gitignore Ignore *.pyc files. 2008-09-12 12:10:33 -10:00
ANNOUNCE Added draft on initial announce email as I keep adding to it. 2008-10-06 09:51:01 -10:00
AUTHORS Initial project description files imported. 2008-09-11 14:16:39 -10:00
COPYING Initial project description files imported. 2008-09-11 14:16:39 -10:00
Makefile Write Makefile and correct problems in setup.py. 2008-10-04 19:51:17 -10:00
POLICY Update the POLICY file. 2008-10-03 15:45:33 -10:00
README Initial project description files imported. 2008-09-11 14:16:39 -10:00
setup.py Fix /usr/share/lorax installation. 2008-10-04 20:15:56 -10:00
TODO Updated to do list. 2008-10-09 17:02:10 -10:00

I am the Lorax.  I speak for the trees [and images].

Tree building tools such as pungi and revisor rely on 'buildinstall' in
anaconda/scripts/ to produce the boot images and other such control files
in the final tree.  The existing buildinstall scripts written in a mix of
bash and Python are unmaintainable.  Lorax is an attempt to replace them
with something more flexible.


EXISTING WORKFLOW:

pungi and other tools call scripts/buildinstall, which in turn call other
scripts to do the image building and data generation.  Here's how it
currently looks:

   -> buildinstall
       * process command line options
       * write temporary yum.conf to point to correct repo
       * find anaconda release RPM
       * unpack RPM, pull in those versions of upd-instroot, mk-images,
         maketreeinfo.py, makestamp.py, and buildinstall

       -> call upd-instroot

       -> call maketreeinfo.py

       -> call mk-images (which figures out which mk-images.ARCH to call)

       -> call makestamp.py

       * clean up


PROBLEMS:

The existing workflow presents some problems with maintaining the scripts.
First, almost all knowledge of what goes in to the stage 1 and stage 2
images lives in upd-instroot.  The mk-images* scripts copy things from the
root created by upd-instroot in order to build the stage 1 image, though
it's not completely clear from reading the scripts.


NEW IDEAS:

Create a new central driver with all information living in Python modules.
Configuration files will provide the knowledge previously contained in the
upd-instroot and mk-images* scripts.


-- 
David Cantrell <dcantrell@redhat.com>