I have a minimalinux installation that I'm trying to make into a basic webserver. This distribution doesn't come with an ide or anything so I have to insert a LiveCD with a build environment and compile it onto the hard drive.

I'm looking for somewhere/one that can give me some advise on how to do this. I've googled around, but I can't find anything useful...Thanks

You are probably better off cross compiling it on another machine and then just copying the binary over to the hard drive.

If I compile it one one computer, how can I ensure that I copy everything that I need to install it on another computer?

just compile it inside of a directory, you can just do ./configure root=/somedirectory and then copy the directory to the machine

and this one for the kernel-source the devel sfs you down laod the iso.image. and burn it to cd. now take another cd and burn the two other files on to it.. Now boot puppy and after he is booted pull the disk out. and insert the other now just open the cdrom and click on the to files . now you have a complete live systemIt actually isany way if you can get and image of puppy linux on hard hardrive and put those two files on somrehow it would work. if you use a usb then have your friend install it on a usbdrive then boot the usbdrive.

It's that easy? Just use the --prefix=/some/dir and then copy it to another dir?

What if the source creates a library in another dir?

you need to go to the puppylinux forums and read up. it is simple.

It won't because it thinks /some/dir is the root directory so it just makes directories in that one

a minumal system is about 10 mb or less. take an image from your remasterd live cd and dd if=/your image of=/your/harddrive. no compile just an image of that node your trying to build. then yeap your server is bootable and ready to boot.
build the image and move it.