Calamares

Distribution-independent installer framework

Dependencies

• CMake >= 2.8.12
• Qt >= 5.3
• yaml-cpp >= 0.5.1
• Python >= 3.3
• Boost.Python >= 1.55.0
• extra-cmake-modules
• kconfig (part of kf5)
• solid (part of kf5)
• kcoreaddons (part of kf5)
• ki18n (part of kf5)

Building

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

Design notes

Calamares is currently split as follows:

• libcalamares - the backend 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);
• libcalamaresui - the frontend library,
• same dependencies as libcalamares, plus QtWidgets and other Qt modules,
• comes with a module loading system, for different kinds of plugins,
• themeable so branding can be done easily (plugin-based, TBD),
• presents a bunch of pages in a scripted order, enqueues jobs in the backend library;
• calamares - the main executable,
• a thin wrapper around libcalamaresui, starts up and plugs together all the parts.

Some modules require additional dependencies: for example the partition viewmodule pulls in partitionmanager, which in turn requires a few KF5 libraries.