The hard part will come when we need to pick the bare minimum set of functionality. I especially want to know what additional libraries/RPMs/features we need to install beyond what we alrady have in XO 8.2.0.
I have been quite frustrated with the Fedora toolset in this regard. Getting a bare minimum of functionality is not something which these tools are typically used to do. The experience of building a Fedora system from 'scratch' contrasts starkly with what we find in Debian, where debootstrapping is a common development pattern which is well-supported by the community.
It can be done, and I am going to seek as much help from the Fedora community in doing so as possible. It just isn't easy and I have felt like there are a lot of problems in using Fedora in this fashion which will have to be resolved to make it easy for deployments to use such a build script.
(I sincerely hope someone flames me here as any attention to this issue is good attention.)
Fedora has a set of tools now called Appliance-Tools [1] for creating this sort of thing. You can use it to specify a minimal build and then pull in the extra stuff you want, specify repositories etc. I used it to build a joyride VM I could use for slicing and dicing package deps and the like the other day in around 15 mins (plus the time it takes to construct the actual filesystem etc). I can post the kickstart file somewhere if your interested in using it as a base. The image it produced has a boot issue that I need to get time to fix (or work out why its got root fs issues) but it was a quick demo to see if it helped.
I think this is what you are after. There are still some issues with packages pulling in too many deps and as time permits I'm trying to work through most of these issues while not having to fork half the distribution which in turn makes it more work for the OLPC guys. Its a fine line.
I can help you as much as possible, I'm relatively free for the next couple of days but will be then travelling over the next couple of weeks so will have limited connectivity.
I have no issue with the flames, but would much prefer to help you out than flame back :-D
Peter
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Peter Robinson