FC8 customised distro (inc customised packages)
 

Morning,

I spent a couple of hours yesterday installing FC8. This is about the 6th time I've done this in recent weeks and it's getting tedious

I know you can respin your own distribution using revisor (et al). and have read several useful tutorials on the subject, however, none of them assist you in creating a truly customised distribution.

Every time I install FC8 I additionally install half a dozen packages and get rid of some. I also configure each package manually and would like these changed config files to also become part of the distribution. This is the bit that I'm not sure how to do.

Can anyone offer any assistance.

Regards
Mark

That's not the fault of the docs. A respin is just a customisation in the sense of "an arbitrary collection of packages".


Two approaches I can think of. One would be to make the changes, get the .src.rpm packages for those packages you made changes in, inject the changes, recompile RPMs then respin. This approach is way more elaborate but if you like gory details and are into respinning and packaging you should learn a lot. Else copy the original config files, make the changes, diff them and make a package (or a script) that will apply those diffs as patches. The second approach is much simpler, portable and efficient since you don't taint original packages but save site specific as customisations you can apply at will.

No, I know. I wasn't criticising the documentation and tutorials, most of which are excellent. I was simply lamenting the lack of docs that cover complete package customisation.

This is the approach I'd like to take. I need to start understanding the whole package construction in depth. Any pointers ??

Thx
Mark.

So... can we expect you to write one? :-]


For the "how to respin" part I think you'll find Fedora Unity and Fedora has enough docs.
For injecting changes per package maybe I can help as I build packages myself.

I'll certainly try and put my thoughts and discoveries down in some e-form.

I'd certainly like to strike up a dialogue on this.