Glenn Lagasse wrote: > One part of the automated VM construction project is that we'll need to > have a VM to install in to. My original thought was that using > VirtualBox's cli VBoxManage, DC could configure a VM with either a > vanilla set of options statically or configure the VM using data > supplied in a manifest. The issue I see is that there are a LOT of > options that one can set for a VM. And providing support for all of > them in a manifest is going to be unwieldy. Using a vanilla set of > options could work, but then we have to decide what those settings are > and do they provide what users (those creating the virtual appliances) > will want. > > The third option is to have DC take the name of a pre-configured VM from > a manifest and use that to install in to. This would require the user > running DC to create and configure a VM in VirtualBox before running DC > and supplying the name (and possibly a few other bits of relevant > information) in the manifest used to create the virtual appliance. > This option allows us to not 're-invent the wheel' as it were in terms > of configuring VMs but does require some manual setup on the part of the > user before he can actually create his virtual appliance (instead of > just modifying a manifest and running distro_const build). > > Thoughts? >
Glenn, If I understand correctly you describe 3 scenarios: 1- Configure VM with a set of predefined option settings. 2- Provide for user supplied, manifest driven VM configuration 3- Allow the user to specify the identifier of a pre-configured VM in the manifest. If I got this correct, I think from the users perspective providing 1 and 3 would also provide for option 2. In that, if the user desires a specific configuration in the VM, they can configure the VM and specify it in the DC manifest. This would also allow us to avoid the unwieldy support of the many VM options in a manifest, while at the same time provide the user with a mechanism to utilize VM as they need. Thoughts? Joe
