Automation of the 11.3-systemd rc1 has been successful on a Fedora build system up to Chapter 9.
At this point what’s left is:
- populate some of the system config files (/etc/*)
- set up udev
- set up the timezone
- some minor systemd disablement
- set the system locale
- compile the kernel
- set up kernel module load orders
- configure grub to be on an iso and install the bootloader to that iso (this will require deviation from the LFS book)
The fun part is that I’m not going to be using stock values for these. It’ll give you curses dialogs asking for input on alot of the stuff you’d normally configure on your OS, though, I may be reserving alot of that implementation for an “installer ISO” so that the values aren’t baked into the ISO in future versions.
After that, it’s an RPM variant.
After that it’s a reductionist rewrite cross-referenced with other unrelated projects to create a more minimal system without sacrificing on the core components.
All in all, looking back through the work, this process would have only taken a couple days, maybe a few hours for someone who’s done it before, but, automating it — I think that’s where this project’s value is.
I would like to see someone fork it, containerize the process, and then use pull requests with automated unit tests to accelerate OS development.
In the meantime once this ALFS-NG baby project is wrapped up, I’ll rebrand it as that, and then use the Dark Horse Linux label to build out the real deal.