[Koha] RFC: Koha Virtual Appliances

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 8:32 AM, Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I would say VirtualBox images are a given.

Cool.

> I could also roll Xen appliances. However, I'm not sure if anyone
> would actually use them. If you can set up Xen, then setting up a Koha
> demo is trivial in comparison.

Agreed.

> I would also be willing to continue making VMWare images if there most
> people would still use them.

I suspect that there would be some demand because VMWare is kind of a
default choice for virtualization and is gratis to use for personal
use to run images, but it seems reasonable to only do VirtualBox
images if it becomes too much trouble to maintain the VMWare images as
well.

> Second is the issue of configuration. In the past, I've been rolling 2
> types of vm's for each Koha version:
> 1) Fully configured up to but not including the web-based setup. This
> allows someone to still choose Zebra or NoZebra, and decide what if
> any example data is imported.
> 2) Fully configured up to and including the web-based setup, with all
> example data included.

I think having both options is useful as long as you're willing to do
them.  Even though it is simple to run through the installer, having
an image that let's you start using Koha *right away* let's a
potential user focus on whether Koha is the right choice for them.

> Third, which versions of Koha should be rolled, and how often? Koha
> changes to fast to make one for every version, but I'd be willing to
> try doing monthly/bi-monthly updates. Should I bother with main
> releases, such as 3.01? These days, it seems like the latest version
> is always pretty stable, and I think the manual tends to follow the
> latest version. Are there frozen versions of the manual for releases
> such as 3.01?

My preference would be to have images for the current 3.0.x released
version and periodic images of HEAD.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
VP, Research & Development, LibLime
galen.charlton at liblime.com
p: 1-888-564-2457 x709
skype: gmcharlt