This is a rewrite of the former KIWI appliance builder which you can find here: https://github.com/openSUSE/kiwi.
- Motivation
- Installation
- Quick Start
- Supported Distributions
- Contributing
- Packaging and Versioning
- Documentation
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.
packages for the new kiwi version are provided at the openSUSE buildservice
$ zypper in python-kiwi
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
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
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 2.7. Although
it's targetted for openSUSE, it's very similar for other distributions
with minor corrections:
$ sudo zypper in python-virtualenv
$ sudo zypper in python-bumpversion
$ sudo zypper in python-Sphinx
$ virtualenv-2.7 .env2
Once the development environment exists it needs to be activated and initialized with the project required Python modules:
$ . .env2/bin/activate
$ pip 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
The version schema is based on python-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
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