Dear fellows,
This is a simple Makefile which generates ova[1] of customized debian,
inpired by an ova build script of sagemath[2], and a guide from
archlinux[5].
It is a by-product of AireLinux[3], a customized Debian for
astrophysics.
It basically creates a hdd image with debian debootstrapped and
additional packages installed, and then calls virtualbox to generate the
ova from the hdd image.
Why not automated d-i in a virtual machine(vm)? vm overhead can be
avoided using kpartx and chroot, resulting in faster image
build. Furthermore, commands in chroot can be controled from the
building host (e.g. the file dependences by Makefile, while d-i has
another command context inside virtual machine.
Why not Debian Live[4]? While strong in creating iso and squashfs
automagically, it is not mature in creating a plain simple hdd image
(not to mention a grub2 powered hdd image).
Future versions are tracked in the repo[6].
Enjoy!
Benda
Footnotes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Virtualization_Format
2. http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/11330
3. http://www.airelinux.org
4. http://live.debian.net
5. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Creating_Arch_Linux_disk_image
6. https://sourceforge.net/p/aire/code/ci/master/tree/