paullalonde / macos-parallels-build-vms

Builds Parallels Desktop macOS VMs containing Xcode and Homebrew.

MacOS Parallels Build VMs

Creates a Parallels Desktop virtual machine containing basic macOS developer tools, suitable for use as a build machine. It starts with a base VM (see below), and performs the following actions:

• Adds an SSH key for the packer account.
• Disables software updates.
• Installs the following software:
  • Homebrew
  • jq
  • Xcode

Installing Xcode, in particular, is enormously time-consuming. For that reason, this VM doesn't install anything beyond that. That's left to other VMs that use this one as a base.

Requirements

• Packer 1.8
• Parallels Desktop 17 (Pro or Business edition, ie $$)
• Parallels Virtualization SDK 17.1.4
• Ansible
• A base VM
• An Xcode XIP file. This is a cryptographically signed archive of the entire Xcode installation, in an Apple-specific format. XIP files for every version of Xcode can be found in the downloads area of the Apple Developer web site. Access to the downloads requires an Apple Developer account.

Base VM

The base VM must have the following characteristics:

• It runs one of the supported versions of macOS (Catalina, Big Sur, or Monterey).
• There's an administrator account called packer with a known password.
• Remote Login (i.e. SSH) must be turned on, and enabled for the packer account.
• The Command Line Developer Tools are installed.

The base VM must be named and located according to the following convention:

• The VM is packaged as a tar'd and gzip'd Parallels Desktop VM (.pvm extension). It's named ${base_vm_url}/${base_vm_name}.pvm.tgz, where base_vm_url and base_vm_name are defined below.
• There is also a checksum file, named ${base_vm_url}/${base_vm_name}.pvm.tgz.sha256, which is the output of running sha256sum on the tgz file.

This repository can generate a suitable base VM.

Xcode

Xcode must be named and located according to the following convention:

• The Xcode XIP file is downloaded from this location: ${xcode_xip_base_url}/Xcode_${xcode_version}.xip.
• The XIP file name (Xcode_${xcode_version}.xip) is the file's name when downloaded from Apple.
• The base URL (${xcode_xip_base_url}) is used to reach the Xcode XIP file. You need to host this yourself; downloading directly from Apple is unsupported.

Setup

1. Generate an SSH key for the packer account in the VM.

   ssh-keygen

   The private key needs to be saved somewhere. Don't lose it!

2. Create a Packer variables file for the version of macOS you are interested in, at packer/conf/<os>.pkrvars.hcl. Add the following variables:

   • base_vm_checksum The SHA256 checksum of the base VM.
   • base_vm_name The name of the base VM, without any extension. Obviously, the base VM has to actually run the correct version of macOS.
   • base_vm_url The base URL for downloading the base VM.
   • os_name The name of the macOS version in the base VM.
   • ssh_password The password of the packer account in the VM.

3. Edit the Ansible file at group_vars/all.yaml. Edit the following variables:

   • xcode_xip_base_url See above.

4. Edit the Ansible file at group_vars/<os>.yaml. Edit the following variables:

   • packer_ssh_public_key The SSH public key generated in step 1.
   • xcode_version (Optional) The version of Xcode to install; see above.

Procedure

1. Run the script:

   ./make-build-vm.sh --os <name>

   where name is one of:
   • catalina
   • bigsur
   • monterey
2. Packer will the perform the following steps:
   1. Create the new VM as a copy of the base VM.
   2. Run the Ansible playbook, which in turn installs Homebrew and Xcode.
   3. Save the VM.
   4. Tar & gzip the VM, producing a .tgz file.
   5. Compute the tgz file's checksum and save it to a file.
3. The final outputs will be:
   • output/macos-${os_name}-build.pvm.tgz, the tar'd and gzip'd VM.
   • output/macos-${os_name}-build.pvm.tgz.sha256, the checksum.

Related Repositories

• Bootable ISO images for macOS.
• Base VMs for macOS.