Archerry

Declerative Arch Linux installer.

Features

• Basic partitioning
• Base install (kernel, firmware, base, bootloader)
• System setup from a human-readable specification file
• Incremental execution
• Tag selection

Specification file

The system is configured with a YAML specification/config file. Upon execution user is prompted to fill missing fields in the specification and then shell scripts are composed from the specification and run.

Options

• hostname ‒ Hostname which is shown on the network
• username ‒ Username of the admin account
• password ‒ Password for the admin account
  Not recommended to store in spec
• timezone ‒ Timezone keyword for timedatectl
• disk ‒ Disk device path eg. /dev/sda
  Not recommended to store in spec since it may not be consistent
• swap ‒ Swap size in MiB
• yay ‒ Whether to install and use yay for installing packages
• pkg ‒ Tree of packages
• git ‒ Tree of git repositories to clone
• fs ‒ Tree of files to write
• cmd ‒ Tree of commands to execute in the end

Example

Simple example of a specification file. See more at rasmusmerzin/cfg-archerry.

hostname: MyLaptop
username: admin
timezone: Europe/Helsinki
swap: 1024
yay: true

pkg:
  - dhcpcd
  - tree neovim
  - xorg xorg-xinit dmenu slock feh
  - tag: emoji
    pkg: remove:libxft libxft-bgra ttf-twemoji

git:
  - repo: gitlab.com/rasmusmerzin/dwm
    path: ~/repos/dwm
  - repo: gitlab.com/rasmusmerzin/st
    path: ~/repos/st
  - tag: config
    git:
      - repo: gitlab.com/rasmusmerzin/cfg-nvim
        path: ~/repos/cfg-nvim
      - repo: gitlab.com/rasmusmerzin/cfg-bash
        path: ~/repos/cfg-bash

fs:
  - path: ~/.xinitrc
    write: |
      [ -x ~/.fehbg ] && ~/.fehbg
      exec dwm

cmd:
  - sudo systemctl enable dhcpcd
  - cd ~/repos/dwm && sudo make install
  - cd ~/repos/st && sudo make install
  - tag: config
    cmd:
      - cd ~/repos/cfg-nvim && make
      - cd ~/repos/cfg-bash && make

Tags

Tags are a way of making the specification file modular. Tags act similar to CSS selectors. In the example by excluding config tag during execution repositories cfg-nvim and cfg-bash are not cloned nor will make be run for them.

Usage

Currently the recommended way to use Archerry is as follows:

1. Boot with Arch Linux ISO
2. Configure network (should be automatic when using ethernet).
   When using Wi-Fi the easiest way to connect is

   wpa_supplicant -Bi <INTERFACE> -c <(wpa_passphrase <SSID> <PASSWORD>)

   See more at ArchWiki wpa_supplicant.
3. Install Git with

   pacman -Sy git

4. Download Archerry with

   clone https://gitlab.com/osoy/archerry

5. Download your specification file with

   curl <URL> -o spec.yaml

6. Run Archerry with

   ./archerry/archerry spec.yaml

After installation a log file is created at /var/log/archerry.log.

Archerry creates shell scripts from your specification file and executes them while showing a statusbar.

Created scripts are main.bash, root.bash, user.bash and are stored in archerry/dist directory.

main.bash includes disk setup and pacstrap which should be run from iso. It also includes chroot entries to root.bash and user.bash.

root.bash is run after pacstrap as root and includes bootloader setup and user creation.

user.bash is run last as created user and includes most that's generated from the specification file.

You can check installed files and packages with

archerry -c <FILE>

Example result:

Checking fs...
Different: /home/erm/.xinitrc
Missing: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/70-synaptics.conf
Total 5, Missing 1, Different 1

Checking pkg...
Missing: xf86-input-synaptics
Total 61, Missing 1

You can create & optionally run only the user script with

archerry -u <FILE>

See more with

archerry -h

Related projects

• Arch Installer Official Arch Linux Installer
• Decpac Arch Linux declarative package management
• NixOS Linux distribution based on the Nix package manager