Managing the Project Catalog

A Project Catalog is a collection of software components that are available for UForge users to use when building their server templates. A project is one software component. A project includes files, binaries or native packages and may have an EULA (End User License Agreement).

Each organization within the UForge platform has a project catalog, and each member of the organization has access to the project catalog, allowing them to add projects to their appliances. The contents of the project catalog can be updated and managed by administrators, in order to be adapted to the users of the organization. As the administrator, you can:

• add new projects to the catalog
• update existing projects to the catalog
• mark a project obsolete
• delete a project

You can also create custom OS profiles to include specific packages to an existing (standard) OS profile. See Creating Custom OS Profiles with UI.

Adding a Project

To add a new project:

1. Under the Administration tab, click Projects.

2. Click on add project in the top right hand.

   Note

   Projects are associated with a specific version of operating system. If a project supports more than one version of operating system, then you must re-create a new project for each operating system version. To automate the way projects are added and maintained, use the UForge APIs (for example to add the same project to multiple operating systems).

3. Fill in the mandatory information including:

   • Name of the project

   Note

   If you are creating a project with specific VirtIO drivers which will allow users to publish Windows images to KVM on Red Hat Linux, then the name must begin with UForgeWinDrivers.

   • Version
   • Project tag
   • Category
   • Maintainer

   

4. Click create.

5. Optionally, you can add the following meta-data on the Overview tab:

   • a logo for the project
   • website information of where the project came from
   • description

6. Optionally, you can restrict the distribution or target format that the project applies to, from the Restrictions page. The restriction rule is set as a regular expression. For more information, refer to Restricting Projects for OSes and Formats.

   

7. You can add files by clicking upload. If you want to add many files, you can create a folder and add files within the folder.

   

   If you want to include files from a remote location click on pull. Select how the file should be retrieved and if it should be cached.

   

8. You can add a license (optional). To do so,

   1. Go to the License tab
   2. Select the license type from the drop-down menu.
   3. Click upload.
   4. Select the file and click open.

9. You can add a bootscript (optional) on the Bootscript tab.

   1. Enter the name.
   2. Select the type. If you select first boot, then the boot script will be launched only once, the first time the instance is launched. If you select every boot, then the boot script will be launched every time the instance is rebooted.
   3. Set the boot order.
   4. Enter the boot script.

   

10. Click Save.

Restricting Projects for OSes and Formats

Under Projects you can restrict the usage of a project based on a distribution name, family, architecture or for a specific machine image format.

• To set restriction rules for a project:

  1. Under the Administration tab, click Projects.
  2. Select the project you want to modify.

  3. Go to the Restrictions tab. Enter the restriction rule. The restriction rule is represented by a logical expression with format Object#field=value or Object#field!=value, where:

     • object is either Distribution or TargetFormat
     • for Distribution field is family, pkgType, name, version or arch. The version must be a major version.
     • for TargetFormat field is name or type
     • value is the value you want to match with the fields. For example, CentOS for Distribution name, linux for Distribution family, x86_64 for Distribution arch, VirtualBox for TargetFormat name, cloud for TargetFormat type.
     • logical operator is || for OR and && for AND
     • carriage return is not authorized

For example, if the project is designed only for distributions CentOS 7 x86_64 or Debian 8 x86_64, or for TargetFormat with type virtual, then you would note the Restriction rule as follows:

(Distribution#arch=x86_64 && ((Distribution#name=CentOS && Distribution#version=7) || (Distribution#name=Debian && Distribution#version=8))) || TargetFormat#type=virtual

Note

If your project is limited to a certain target format and you generate an image in another format, your appliance will be generated but the project will not be part of the final image.

• Restriction rule values:

By using the command-line tool hammr, you are able to retrieve available distributions:

$ hammr os list --url https://uforge.example.com/api -u username -p password

Where Distribution fields possible values are:

• name: the value listed in the Name column
• version: the value listed in the Version column
• arch: the value listed in the Architecture column
• family: can be one of the following linux, unix or windows
• pkgType: can be either application/x-rpm or application/x-debian-package

By using the command-line tool hammr, you are able to retrieve available machine image formats:

$ hammr format list --url https://uforge.example.com/api -u username -p password

Where TargetFormat fields possible values are:

• name: the value listed in the Builder Type column
• type: can be one of the following cloud, container, physical or virtual

Updating a Project

UForge provides the default projects for the OSes provided.

To modify the projects:

1. Under the Administration tab, click Projects.
2. You will see a list of all the projects that are part of the org.
3. Click on the project you wish to edit. At this stage you can change any of the meta-data, restrictions and files uploaded.

Deleting a Project

When deleting projects from the catalog, it is important to understand that you should check that no appliance templates are using the project you wish to delete (otherwise this may break generating a machine image for the appliance template).

Note

If an appliance template is still using a project, you can remove the project from the catalog by marking it as obsolete. This does not delete the project contents, however users cannot use the project for new appliance templates. See Marking a Project as Obsolete for more information.

To delete the project:

1. Under the Administration tab, click Projects.

2. You will see a list of all the projects that are part of the org.

3. To delete the project you can either:

   • Click on the delete icon at the extreme right-hand side in the table for the project item.
   
   • Click on the project item to edit it, then click on the delete icon at the top right-hand side of the project edit page.
   

Marking a Project as Obsolete

Another way to remove a project from the project catalog is to mark the project as obsolete. This ensures that any existing templates that use the project can still generate images correctly, however the project is no longer accessible in the catalog for new appliance templates.

To mark a project as obsolete:

1. Under the Administration tab, click Projects.
2. You will see a list of all the projects that are part of the org.
3. Click on the project to edit it.
4. Click on the obsolete icon at the top right-hand side of the project edit page.