greenbone-env

The problem

You need to develop/test/work on different versions/branches/features of the GVM/OpenVAS modules, it's difficult to track where these versions are installed and you have to adjust all the paths manually.

Solution

Create an environment for Greenbone/OpenVAS development. This allows to use different versions of OpenVAS at the same time by seperating the install directory. Highly inspired by virtualenv for python.

Install

greenbone-env requires Python 3 to be installed.

Clone the repo and run

$ path/to/greenbone-env <path/to/env>

e.g.

$ ~/git/greenbon-env/greenbon-env ~/install/master-with-postgres

to create a new environment. At the specified environment directory greenbone-env adds an activate script which must be sourced to get into the environment.

Running

$ source path/to/env/bin/activate

e.g

$ source ~/install/master-with-postgres/bin/activate

will start the environment. Afterwards you will get a prompt like

(env: master-with-postgres) $

The environment can be terminated by running

(env: myenv) $ deactivate

Usage

activate

The activate script sets some shell environment variables and shell aliases to be able to separate installations. These environment variables will be used when configuring the GVM/OpenVAS repos. E.g. to configure openvas-scanner to be installed within the environment use the following commands:

(env: myenv) $ mkdir build
(env: myenv) $ cd build
(env: myenv) $ cmake path/to/scanner-git-repo-clone
(env: myenv) $ make
(env: myenv) $ make install

build

The build script even simplifies the steps to build a specific GVM/OpenVAS module. By passing a second parameter to greenbone-env it is possible to customize the source prefix directory where the source of the modules can be found. The third parameter sets the build prefix directory.

$ path/to/greenbone-env <path/to/env> <path/to/sources> <path/to/builds>

e.g.

$ ~/git/greenbon-env/greenbon-env ~/install/master-with-postgres ~/sources ~/builds

Afterward a module can be build with

(env: myenv) $ build <modulename>

e.g.

(env: myenv) $ build gvm

Example:

$ ~/git/greenbon-env/greenbon-env ~/install/my-env ~/sources ~/builds
$ source ~/install/my-env/bin/activate
(env: myenv) $ build gvm

will build gvm from ~/source/gvm in ~/builds/gvm and installs to ~/my-env.