Python module

Archinstall supports running in module mode. The way the library is invoked in module mode is limited to executing scripts under the example folder.

It’s there for important to place any script or profile you wish to invoke in the examples folder prior to building and installing.

Pre-requisites

We’ll assume you’ve followed the Manual installation method. Before actually installing the library, you will need to place your custom installer-scripts under ./archinstall/examples/ as a python file.

More on how you create these in the next section.

Warning

This is subject to change in the future as this method is currently a bit stiff. The script path will become a parameter. But for now, this is by design.

Creating a script

Lets create a test_installer - installer as an example. This is assuming that the folder ./archinstall is a git-clone of the main repo. We begin by creating ./archinstall/examples/test_installer.py. The placement here is important later.

This script can now already be called using python -m archinstall test_installer after a successful installation of the library itself. But the script won’t do much. So we’ll do something simple like list all the hard drives as an example.

To do this, we’ll begin by importing archinstall in our ./archinstall/examples/test_installer.py and call some functions.

import archinstall

all_drives = archinstall.list_drives()
print(all_drives)

This should print out a list of drives and some meta-information about them. As an example, this will do just fine.

Now, go ahead and install the library either as a user-module or system-wide.

Calling a module

Assuming you’ve followed the example in Creating a script, you can now safely call it with:

python -m archinstall test_installer

This should now print all available drives on your system.

Note

This should work on any system, not just Arch Linux based ones. But note that other functions in the library relies heavily on Arch Linux based commands to execute the installation steps. Such as arch-chroot.