Thinking of using CentOS as a host for a Linux Appliance.
1)Use the binrary rpms and install to a directory on a development machine using the rpm --prefix option. Not sure yet how to specify to create and use an rpm database on the development machine as opposed to a database on the development machine.
I use rpmstrap (http://rpmstrap.pimpscript.net/) to do this, works pretty well. (hrm, weird, I just noticed that the maintainer abandoned the project :O
Rpmstrap can be a little finnicky to get going at first, but after a little bit, it works great.
Is this really a sensible approach or just using something like Kickstart?
- There might be some packages that I want to build from
source. Then I am thinking I would need the exact compiler used to compile the binary rpms. How would I obtain the compiler and environment used to build the CentOS binary rpms?
Any compiler will do from what I have seen, for building your own .rpm's, or for re-building/modifying centOS's .rpm's.