Ken Robinson's picture

I have been an avid user of TKL for 2-3 years now. I would like to give back by creating some apps. I downloaded th TKLDev and started to read the docs and I am a little unclear on how you get to the "sandbox"

The doc says:

"Note that before we start playing in the sandbox the overlay does not exist" 

But I don't see where you create it. What am I missing?

I want to create some custom "products" just to get my feet wet however this step escapes me at the momment.

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Jeremy Davis's picture

TBH I haven't used the sandbox much.

FWIW I recently documented the process that I use for development and tried to make it a bit newb friendly. Have a look here and see what you think. Happy for any feedback.

Ken Robinson's picture

I'll head over to the link and take a look. Thanks for the reply. I'll let you know my thoughts. I would not call my self a master linux user by any means, however I know enough to move about the OS. I'll be messing around with the TKLDev tonight.

Regards,

Ken  
":0)

http://www.github.com/DocCyblade

Ken Robinson's picture

Nice overview, it pretty much sums the process, and the links to the more detail is perfect. 

May I suggest adding or making another overview of submitting your creation to the offical TKL list. I have seen the docs, but they are a bit super detailed. 

Regards,

Ken  
":0)

http://www.github.com/DocCyblade

Jeremy Davis's picture

I tweaked them a little (mostly fixed grammar, spelling and formatting) but I will submit them to the main TKLDev docs. I just wanted to get some feedback to make sure that they are useful before I do that...

Thinking some more, perhaps it may be useful to separate it into 2 docs, one that contains the newb friendly 'getting started' type stuff and another that is essentially a 'quick start to building a new appliance'. Would that make sense do you think?

Ken Robinson's picture

 

 

Two docs would be a good start. One like you said, for the newb that would have enough info to build a quick custom just to get your feet wet, with links to the more detail version. I would think the newb overview would need to have all the info you need to do a quick build and have a simple understanding. I found my self clicking the more info links, and getting lost. 

The in-depth ver should follow the same steps as the newb ver but have a lot more info. This way when the newb (like my self) has a good understanding I can switch to the other doc and know where I am at in the process and since I am not looking at this doc for the overall process but for a deeper dive into the steps I should not get lost in the process from detail overload!

The problem however with multi docs is keeping them fresh when things change. I think if you do the detailed version first, the newb version is just a simplifed copy of the detail.

One last thought, I also like the idea of "Under the hood" doc. It's one thing to know how to start the car, put it in drive and drive around the town, for someone like my self, I want to know how the motor works. This can be a bad thing because I'll spend all my time under the hood and won't know darn thing about driving it around the block!

Take a multi-layer cake approach: newb Overview -> Deeper Dive into the Details -> Under the hood how it all really  works. With links in the areas that take you to the other level where needed. I would even preface the newb doc to say "Read and understand the process first, then take a deeper dive when you understand the process" 

Those are my thoughts.. 

 

Regards,

Ken  
":0)

http://www.github.com/DocCyblade

Jeremy Davis's picture

That's invaluable feedback IMO and a great suggestion! So much so that I just lodged an issue to that effect!

FWIW though, once you get your head around things, if you are interested then the 'docs' section is an editable wiki (you need to be logged in to the website) and the 'official' docs (on GitHub) can be 'forked', adjusted and a 'pull request' issued. So if you are keen feel free to contribute to docs too! :)

Ken Robinson's picture

So I had some more time tonight and was looking everything over. On this page I found 

make CHROOT_ONLY=y
fab-chroot build/root.sandbox

This does not work for me. I then stumbled on the below from this page

root.sandbox (root.tmp in earlier TKLDev versions) can be used to accelerate development with quick and dirty manual prototyping of changes to the root filesystem.

I then wondered if I have an older version. I downloaded V13 and ran all the updates I thought. Well thats the problem. My "sandbox" was there, it is named root.tmp. I am guessing when he wrote this he was on a new version that has not been released yet. 

As far as I can tell V13 of the TKLDev with all the updates is what I have. Now that has been put to rest I can keep moving learning this tool kit :-)

Regards,

Ken  
":0)

http://www.github.com/DocCyblade

Jeremy Davis's picture

TBH I had forgotten about that. Yes the docs in the 'master' branch of the GitHub repo include updates that will apply to the v13.1 appliance. I have urged the core devs (Alon and Liraz) to tag each release, e.g. tag "v13.0" would then apply to the code when v13.0 was released. I think they have taken that onboard and will start to do that.

If you really wanted the "latest" then you'll need to build TKLDev (in your current TKLDev v13.0) and install from the resulting ISO. Personally I wouldn't bother, but that's up to you...

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