Custom F8 builds and respins

[Keith G. Robertson-Turner]

Verily I say unto thee, that Rahul Sundaram spake thusly:
> Keith G. Robertson-Turner wrote:

>> . Custom compiler optimisation of that full subset of packages
> 
> This might be a sore point for a custom spin.

I'm looking at arch specific opts rather than aggressive opts, but yes
there are bound to be occasional hiccups. What doesn't build first time
will be logged and marked for review (by me or anyone else who wants to
volunteer). I'll get a minimal system at least installable and working,
then take it from there.

I'm not sure how well *rebuilding* fits in with the current respin
procedure, since I would imagine that respins are typically just
reassemblies of binary packages, but rebuilding is central to my goal,
so one way or another that's what I need to do.

>> After I have a repo with all of the rebuilt packages, what would I 
>> then use to spin the ISOs? Just Revisor? Is that the recommended 
>> method, or is that just for end-users rather than distro 
>> maintainers?
> 
> You can use either Pungi or livecd-creator too.

Ah yes, I forgot about Pungi. I've been away too long :)

> Assuming you are aiming for a custom spin hosted by Fedora, 
> regardless of the tools, the deliverable is a kickstart file that we 
> can run through the process. Refer
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/CustomSpins

I'd be quite happy for Fedora to host the finished product, but right
now I just want to get something started. I will need to study the
various infrastructure docs anyway, if I'm going to implement my own
Koji buildsystem, so hopefully I should be up to speed long before I get
to the stage where I'm submitting a spin for review.

> I have a inclination about the kind of spin you are shooting for and
> more details would be nice since I might be interested in 
> participating.

Well my initial motivation was purely selfish (aren't they always? :) ),
since I wanted an F8 system optimised for one of my servers, which is a
VIA EPIA C3 system, not currently supported at all by F8 (bug #367731).

But then it occurred to me that quite a few people probably use these
types of systems as HTPCs or Home Servers (like me), and they'd probably
appreciate a bit of optimisation (as well as just getting it to work at
all) since C3s are not especially fast (and lack certain features like
CMOV and larger caches). I don't immediately plan on providing MythTV
packages, but it's probably a mid to long term goal.

Basically I want something that a) works and b) is optimised for the C3
(and in passing, the AMD K6 family), but this could easily be expanded
into something more, like say "MythDora". We could call it "Fedora MCE",
ultimately with builds for other arch's (but get C3 working first).

If that isn't what you were expecting, then perhaps I may be able to
accommodate you anyway. What did you have in mind?

If you (or anyone else) would like to participate, then you're welcome.