mkschroot
=========

A simple script for making schroot environments from a JSON
configuration file

This first version isn't so smart. It assumes that you're using a 64 bit
host machine, and doesn't check that you're on Debian as it should (it
only uses ``debootstrap`` to build the chroot environment). It's
probably also highly Ubuntu specific right now. To add to the fun it's
not been very thoroughly tested yet either.

To use it you must install a couple of things:

::

    apt-get install debootstrap schroot
    pip install mkschroot

Using mkschroot
---------------

You just need to pass mkschroot a configuration file:

::

    mkschroot ~/chroots/example.json

Configuring mkschroot
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The configuration file needs to be JSON. A configuration file might look
like the below:

::

    {
        "root": "/mnt/files2/chroot",
        "source": "http://th.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/",
        "base-packages": ["lsb-release", "openssh-client"],
        "defaults": {
            "conf": {
                "root-users": ["kirit"],
                "users": ["kirit"]
            }
        },
        "schroot": {
            "build-lucid64": {
                "release": "lucid",
                "packages": [
                    "g++", "libbz2-dev", "libssl-dev", "python-dev", "uuid-dev",
                    "libboost-dev", "subversion", "git-core"
                ]
            },
            "root-ca-kirit": {
                "release": "precise",
                "packages": ["openssl"],
                "conf": {
                    "personality": "linux32"
                }
            }
        }
    }

A chroot configuration is described by a structure like the following:

::

    {
        "release": "lucid",
        "packages": ["g++"],
        "conf": {
            "root-users": ["kirit'"],
            "users": ["kirit"]
        }
    }

-  ``release``: The operating system version you wish to make use of.
-  ``conf``: The fields used for the schroot configuration file (in
   ``/etc/schroot/chroot.d/``). The following fields are required:
   ``root-users``, ``users``, and the following are optional:
   ``description``, ``type``, ``personality``, ``directory``. Do read
   the part about common fields though.

The other options are:

-  ``base-packages``: Packages that are to be installed in all chroots.
-  ``root``: The directory where you want the chroots to be created in
   by default (override this using the ``directory`` setting within a
   chroot).
-  ``source``: Where the packages can be installed from.

Common configuration items
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Generally many of the chroots that you want will share a good deal of
configuration between machines. To help with this a default ``schroot``
configuration can be given which will then have values overridden by the
specific ``schroot``s that you request be made.

This means that the values in the ``defaults`` key will be used, then
any values in the specific ``schroots`` key will be added in, and
finally a few defaults will be generated by ``mkschroot``.

-  ``description``: The release name together with personality name.
-  ``directory``: The ``root`` option will have the schroot name added
   to it.
-  ``type``: Always ``directory``.
-  ``personality``: The same as the host personality (currently hard
   coded to 64 bits)

