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/
Makefile
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