Calamares: Distribution-Independent Installer Framework

Dependencies

Main:

• Compiler with C++11 support: GCC >= 4.9.0 or Clang >= 3.5.1
• CMake >= 2.8.12
• Qt >= 5.3
• yaml-cpp >= 0.5.1
• Python >= 3.3
• Boost.Python >= 1.55.0
• dmidecode

Modules:

• welcome:
• NetworkManager
• UPower
• partition:
• extra-cmake-modules
• KF5: KCoreAddons, KConfig, KI18n, KIconThemes, KIO, KService
• KPMcore >= 2.1
• sgdisk
• bootloader:
• systemd-boot or GRUB
• sgdisk
• unpackfs:
• squashfs-tools
• rsync

Deployment

Setting up branding

Working with modules

Building

Clone Calamares from GitHub and cd into the calamares directory, then:

$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
$ make

Supported variables for CMake

• WITH_PYTHON - if this is set to false, the Python module interface will not be built. Default is true.
• SKIP_MODULES - takes a space-separated list of module names that should not be built even if present in src/modules (e.g. cmake -DSKIP_MODULES="partition mount umount welcome" ..). Default is empty.

Design Notes

Calamares is currently split as follows:

1. libcalamares - The back-end library.

• Only depends on QtCore, yaml-cpp, Python and Boost.Python.
• Provides a job queue and generic jobs.
• Comes with 3 job interfaces: C++, Python and process (the latter is very limited).

2. libcalamaresui - The front-end library.

• Same dependencies as libcalamares, plus QtWidgets and other Qt modules.
• Comes with a module loading system, for different kinds of plugins.
• Supports branding components.
• Presents a bunch of pages in a scripted order, enqueues jobs in the back-end library.

3. calamares - The main executable.

• A thin wrapper around libcalamaresui; starts up and plugs together all the parts.