Custominstallerbuilder docs should use SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging

[aaaaalbert]

The current custominstallerbuilder ("CIB") documentation does not reflect the latest changes to the process of building new base installers. I'll sketch below what high-level information is helpful to understand the overall build/ship workflow, and what specific steps the documentation should mention.

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Preliminaries

The CIB does two interesting things dynamically: It creates a vesselinfofile (given a user session), and adds it to a pregenerated (g)zip archive. The resulting archive is a customized installer which is cashed and can be re-downloaded under a static URL.

The pregenerated (g)zip file is called a "base installer", i.e. a Seattle installer without the vesselinfo.This file must be re-generated whenever the Seattle version is updated, but note that updating it is not part of the function or role of the CIB: The CIB only needs the end result which is an updated set of base installers. The installer packaging tools exist for generating base installers.

It doesn't matter to the CIB where (e.g. on which machine, by which user, in which subdir) exactly its base installers are created. What matters is that the base installer files are copied into a preconfigured directory where the CIB expects them.

Setting up CIB for the first time

• git clone the CIB repo
• Run the buildscripts to generate a Repy runtime for the CIB. (This local runtime is totally independent and separate of the runtimes that are included in a typical Seattle base installer, although it likely uses identical copies of many Seattle files as the base installer contains.)
• Configure the CIB Django project.
• Configure Apache and mod_wsgi to make the CIB accessible from the Web.

This yields a CIB that does not have base installers yet.

Build new base installers

See also https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging/blob/master/README.md . You'd also do this when a new Seattle version should be shipped.

• git clone https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/installer-packaging.git
• Run the buildscripts
• Run the packaging script

Putting CIB and base installers together

Lastly, copy the base installers into the directory that the CIB expects.

[aaaaalbert]

Backtrack:

• Fix Django 1.6 support, XML-RPC handler, tar file dirs, doc link, etc. custominstallerbuilder#14 (comment)
• Ongoing issue4 #14 (comment)
• Can't find installer bundle custominstallerbuilder#15

[aaaaalbert]

This is half-implemented, see https://github.com/SeattleTestbed/docs/blob/master/Operating/CustomInstallerBuilder/Installation.md#building-base-installers .

I'd appreciate if someone could take a look at this issue and the docs page, and point out what they think is missing from the latter.