Customize an Iguana install

While we never white box license Iguana, it is often desirable to deliver Iguana already fully preconfigured to run out of the box, or partially preconfigured to give end-users a head start towards their final use.

Only two files are involved in creating a custom configuration: IguanaConfiguration.xml and vcs_repo.sqlite. The vcs_repo.sqlite file is new since version 5.0 of Iguana. It stores the Lua source code for the Translator channels.

The easiest way to create a custom installation is to start from a downloaded zip archive intended for manually installing Iguana and modify it to include the specific configuration you want. The modified zip archive can then be extracted into a directory of choice ready to be executed by a simple “iguana –run” command.

Highlights

• By altering the zip file so that it comes with your own specialized IguanaConfiguration.xml and Fossil repository (vcs_repo.sqlite), a vendor can have Iguana preconfigured to use their own specific configuration.
• Vendors will usually be advised to either ship a vcs_repo.sqlite file, which means that their install will always overwrite any current install, or the initial.sqlite repository, which is copied by Iguana if vcs_repo.sqlite is not found.
• The simplest way to create a vcs_repo.sqlite file is just to copy it from a existing copy of Iguana that has the desired configuration. It is possible to extract files from a Fossil repository and then create a fresh repository without having all of the history of those files.

It’s possible to work out the details of how to create a custom install, from basic principles, using the information on these pages and other pages in our present manual. But this topic seems to interest a lot of vendors, so watch this page. More details will follow.