path: root/NEWS

NEWS for vmdb2, the Debian disk image builder
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Version 0.18, released 2020-08-13
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* The way the manual was formatted could sometimes lead to different
  plugins' documentation being merged into the same section. This has
  now been fixed.


Version 0.17, released 2020-07-13
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* The luks plugin now runs the `cryptsetup` utility with the `-q`
  (alias for `--batch-mode`) option for batch mode, to prevent the
  utility from asking any questions of the user. Fix by Birger
  Schacht.


Version 0.16, released 2020-06-06
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* Progress output is now flushed after every write. This matters, when
  the output goes to a pipe, because then Python would buffer the
  output, meaning that progress output gets delayed until the buffer
  fills up, and that's useless.

* The documentation is now formatted using Subplot. Previously, the
  manual and the acceptance test suite were split into separate, but
  confusingly named files (vmdb2.md vs vmdb2.mdwn); now they are
  combined. The manual has been cleaned up a bit.

* Add a `quiet` field to the **grub step** to configure the kernel
  boot to be quiet or not. Default is now not quiet, which is a change
  from before.

* Add a `timeout` field to the **grub step** to configure grub menu
  timeout. Default is now zero seconds, which is a change from the
  Debian default of five seconds.

* Symbolic links can now be used in the **mkpart step** for device
  files, thanks to Tim Small.


Version 0.15, released 2020-05-05
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### New and changed features

* Document and rename the `virtual-filesystems` plugin. This allows
  installation of Debian packages that require `/proc` to be mounted
  to install, such as `ca-certificates-java`.
  
  Undo previous changes to have `/proc` automatically mounted in the
  chroot, when running commands in the chroot. That wasn't enough
  (e.g., it didn't cover Ansible), and `virtual-filesystems` seems
  generally like the more general and better solution.

  The `grub` step handles the filesystems it needs itself, but doesn't
  mind if they're already mounted.

  This change should NOT require changes to existing, working .vmdb
  files. If it does, please report a bug.

* The .vmdb file can now be passed in via the standard input, by
  specifying `-` as the filename. Patch from voney.

* The manual now documents that un-partitioned images are not
  supported, at least not yet.
  
* The "All went fine" message is now written at the very end of the
  vmdb2 run, if at all. Previously all the messages from teardown
  parts of steps were printed after it, hiding it effectively.
  
* The standard output and error output of the commands vmdb2 runs are
  no longer logged in real time, only after the command has finished.
  This is a side effect of the `cliapp.runcmd` helper function no
  longer being used. The Python standard library subprocess module is
  used directly instead. This change is a step to drop the dependency
  on the cliapp library.

### Bug fixes

* The `grub` step documentation now uses the correct key for
  specifying the image device (`image-dev`). Thanks: Sebastian
  Bachmann.

* The `mkpart` step now waits for the new device node to be created.
  Previously it sometimes took enough time to be created that the next
  step failed. This only affects when the output disk is a real block
  device, not a disk image file.

### Changes mainly affecting vmdb2 and plugin developers

* The `./check` script only runs the yarn integration testing tool if
  it's new enough to have the yarnutils Python library included. Yarn
  is being replaced with Subplot.

* Step runners must now use a new way of specifying expected and
  allowed keys for steps. The new way specifies types for mandatory
  keys, and default values for optional keys. The old
  `get_required_keys` method is gone. This change makes mistakes in
  step runner code a little less likely, and opens up the possibility
  of generating documentation about step keys automatically.

* Failures when un-mounting filesystems are now ignored. Such failures
  can happen for various reasons, but by far the most common reason is
  because the mount had already been unmounted and it's simpler to
  just ignore failures than keep meticulous track of what's been
  unmounted already.
  

Version 0.14.1
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This is a bug fix release to fix bugs in the 0.14 release that slipped
through due to insufficient testing.

* The shell plugin source file was misnamed. Fixed now.

* Fixes to problems found while building real images. The new
  `check-external` script builds my own images, and Debian's Raspberry
  Pi images.


Version 0.14, released 2020-03-21
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It has been two years since the previous release. These release notes
are a little sketchy.

* All plugins now provide exactly one type of step. This is a little
  simpler than having multiple steps provided by the same plugin.
  Simplicity is good.

* There is now some better automated testing.

* vmdb2 now checks at start time that all required keys are set for
  all steps and that keys have values of the correct type.

* Source code for vmdb2 is now hosted on gitlab.com and git.liw.fi,
  moved there from GitHub.

* Fixed smoke test timeout for starting a VM to 5 min. The previous
  timeout (30 s) was short enough that tests often failed because of
  it.

* The `debootstrap` action now finishes with `apt-get update`. For
  some reason thing had changed so that this became necessary.

* Christian Schlüter added the optional `label` field to the `mkfs`
  step to set the filesystem label upon creation.

* Changed the `grub` step to take an optional `image-dev` field to
  override the heuristics for finding the device where GRUB is to be
  installed. This was necessary to allow vmdb2 to install Debian onto
  real hardware.

* The smoke test now tests a UEFI image as well.

* The rootfs unpacking action now copies `/etc/resolv.conf` into the
  chroot, overwriting what the tarball has. This allows vmdb2 to work
  with a tarball generated in a different network location.

* Add plugins for doing full-disk encryption via cryptsetup, and LVM2.

* There is now some documentation.

* Christian Schlüter added support for f2fs labels in the `mkfs` step.

* Step runners may now implement the `run_even_if_skipped` method to
  have code that is run whether the step is skipped or not. The
  `debootstrap` step now uses this to run `apt-get update` always.
  This allows a rootfs tarball that is old to be used, without the
  Packages files being too old to be usable.

* The `cache_rootfs` step now caches all the explicitly mounted
  filesystems, not just the root filesystem.

Version 0.13.2, released 2018-05-06
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* New build, after CI screwed up.

Version 0.13.1, released 2018-04-30
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* Fix build-dependency on pandoc.

Version 0.13.1, released 2018-04-30
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Version 0.12, released 2018-02-24
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* Minor Debian packaging fixes.

Version 0.11, released 2018-02-10
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* Build fixes so that .deb doesn't contain Python 2.7 stuff, which
  isn't wanted or used.

Version 0.10, released 2018-02-10
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* Build tweaks to make builds work on Debian unstable.

Version 0.9, released 2017-10-11
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* Stuart Prescott added a `variant` parameter to the `vmdebootstrap`
  plugin.

* Stuart and Lars documented some of the dependencies in README. If
  they're insufficient, report a bug please.

* Stuart added a `qemu-debootstrap` plugin to build images for a
  foreign architecture.

* Lars Wirzenius added the function `vmdb.runcm_chroot` for executing
  programs inside a chroot. It's a short wrapper around `vmdb.runcmd`,
  but is a little easier to get right than invoking **chroot**(8) via
  `runcmd`. Michael Stapelberg fixed the function.

* Lars Wirzenius changed it so that `.vmdb` files can have structured
  YAML values and their constituent strings are used as Jinja2
  templates. Previously vmdb2 would just crash. This opens a
  possibility to have things like "list of packages to install" for
  the `apt` step as a YAML list, instead of having the step runner
  parse a space delimited list.

* Michael Stapelberg added the `fs-type` parameter to the `mkpart`
  step so that Raspberry Pi images can be created.

* Lars Wirzenius changed the `apt` step. Previously the `apt` field
  values was the name of one package to install. Now the value MUST be
  `install` and a separate field `packages` is a YAML list of package
  names to install. These will all be installed at once.

* Michael Stapelberg and Lars Wirzenius added support for a
  `components` list to the `qemu-debootstrap` step, to allow giving a
  list of components to the debootstrap run by the step.

Version 0.8, released 2017-07-29
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* The `mount` plugin can now specify a mount point on an already
  mounted filesystem, such as /boot inside the root filesystem already
  mounted. This allows constructing a system with a separate /boot
  partition. Thanks to Stuart Prescott for reporting the lack of this
  feature.

Version 0.7, released 2017-06-18
---------------------------------

* New plugin `virtuals` provides step `mount-virtual-filesystems` for
  mounting virtual filesystems such as `/proc` and `/dev` as well.

* The `apt` step installs `eatmydata` and runs `apt` under it, to
  speed up package installs.

Version 0.6, released 2017-06-11
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* setup.py now installs the plugins, making the .deb package actually
  be usable.

Version 0.5, released 2017-06-04
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* The "unless:" part of vmdb spec files now actually works. Previously
  it was entrely unimplmented (there was code to implement the check,
  but it was never actually called). The apt and debootstrap plugins
  have been fixed to not do "has rootfs tarball been unpacked" checks
  themselves.

Version 0.4, released 2017-06-03
---------------------------------

* Add a rudimenteary smoke test yarn for vmdb2-built images.

* Add a plugin to run Ansible to configure an image at build time.
  Doing this via Ansible saves me from having to write equivalent
  functionality directly into vmdb2, which would be quite a lot of
  work. (If someone wants puppet, a plugin for that is probably easily
  doable, assuming it can run against a chroot. I don't now, I've
  never used puppet.)

Version 0.3, released 2017-05-21
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* Simplify progress reporting to go to stdout, plus stop logging
  progress reports ar as errors.

* Add a BIOS flavor for installing GRUB.

Version 0.2, released 2017-05-14
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* Add plugin to provide steps to cache the rootfs, and to unpack the
  rootfs from the cache, instead of running debootstrap or installing
  packages. This speeds up iteration time from about 9 minutes to 40
  seconds on my laptop. See small.vmdb for an example.

* Add a generic "unless this condition is true" functionality to
  steps. If a step has a field "unless: foo" it is skipped the
  variable foo exists and is true. The variables are set by steps, and
  currently only the rootfs unpacking step sets a variable (the
  `rootfs_unpacked` variable). This allows debootstrap to be skipped
  if the rootfs has already been created by unpacking a cached
  tarball.

Version 0.1, released 2017-05-13
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This is the first release. It can build a UEFI image for the amd64
architecture. It's not meant to really be useful for other people.