mkimage-profiles is a collection of bits and pieces useful for
distributions construction: it contains package lists, features,
and whole subprofiles (like "rescue" building block) for you
to choose from, and some ready-made image recipes as well.

Make no mistake: constructing distributions isn't just fun, it takes
a lot of passion and knowledge to produce a non-trivial one.  So m-p
(the short alias for mkimage-profiles) is complex too.  If you need
-- or want -- to make a few tweaks to an existing recipe, it might
be easier to comprehend the generated profile (aka builddir) which
contains only the needed subprofiles, script hooks and package lists
and is way more compact.

The main deliverable form for x86 is a (hybrid) ISO; virtual environment
template caches (OpenVZ/LXC) can be made either as well as VM disk images.

In short, setup hasher (http://en.altlinux.org/hasher) and here we go:
 cd /usr/share/mkimage-profiles
 head README
 make syslinux.iso

But if you're into regular distro hacking and are not afraid of make
and modest metaprogramming (some code generation and introspection),
welcome to the metaprofile itself; read the docs and get the git:
http://altlinux.org/m-p (NB: these are mostly in Russian with translation on demand).

• Anton Midyukov (maintainer)
• Michael Shigorin

• mkimage-profiles
• mkimage-profiles-doc