https://wiki.debian.org/SystemBuildTools

Survey of tools attendees use/like
==================================

live-wrapper being updated to not use vmdebootstrap (deprecated)

debos (in golang) by Collabora, images described in YAML
  - https://ekaia.org/blog/2018/07/03/introducing-debos/
  - used to build embedded images, however has potential to be adapted to other use cases
  - does not need root if you have access to nested KVM via fakemachine (qemu)
  - used by 

vmdb2 (successor to vmdebootstrap) ⇒ Also YAML-described; Python.
http://git.liw.fi/vmdb2/tree/README
vmdebootstrap to be removed (announced by Lars, Jul29, d-d-a)
not usable for some cases ⇒ definitively needs root

https://github.com/sitepoint/debian-image-builder.git
(creates aws images, but can be modified to build traditional images) written in shell → add to the wiki?

propellor (haskell) - cfgmgmt tool but can create images from the results
https://propellor.branchable.com/ (or DebConf17 talk or linux.conf.au talk)

FAI used by Debian cloud team, does a lot of things
another FAI talk, about FAI.me service on Thursday
FAI for ARM talk on Thursday

debirf - system into initramfs

packer - tools to create vm images for multiple platforms
  - Vagrant https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Cloud/RebuildVagrantBaseBoxes
  - Cloud images, AMI/Azure/...
  - VMDK(VMWare)
  - qcow2
  - lxc

openstack-debian-images: currently in use for building the official OpenStack
Debian images at http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/openstack/
This tool is now capable to also setup baremetal computers, and supports
amd64 or arm64, syslinux or grub, bios or uefi.

boxer - https://salsa.debian.org/boxer-team/boxer

debian-installer with preseeding has install support

live-image baremetal installers: calamares, ubiquity
calamares is now also packaged in Debian, and for examples on how to configure
and for examples on how to install on Debian derivatives,
see calamares-settings-debian
.. oh... oh! AND... it's installed in current buster debian-live images, so
you can try it out.

Criteria to pick a tool
=======================

- need to cross-build?
  * debos can cross build for images for ARM (and other arches), but only runs
    on amd64 ATM - do we need to extend debos to run on other build arches?


Questions
=========

- Sharing rootfs de-configuration between Debian Cloud, Debian Live and Debian ARM images?
- which tools can be used for baremetal installs? openstack-debian-images, FAI,   
  propellor (maybe?)
- do any tools support reproducible bit-for-bit identical images?
  - ext[2-4] filesystem UUIDS, writing, etc.
  - Tails uses SquashFS-within-ISO9660, which can now be built reproducibly

- Someone looking into system updaters?
  Tails is starting to look into this (more in 2019): https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/Endless_upgrades/#non-nih
  Collabora looking into RAUC+casync and OSTree (which are also the options that
  look the most promising for Tails ATM)
  - debos already has OSTree support.