README


1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56

# Copyright 1999-2005 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo/src/catalyst/README,v 1.15 2005/12/21 16:56:01 wolf31o2 Exp $

Licensing
========================

Catalyst is copyrighted by the Gentoo Foundation, and released
under the terms of the GNU General Public License v.2.0 or later. For more
information, please consult COPYING.

Disclaimer
========================

Gentoo Linux extends no warranty or guarantee for catalyst. Use at
your own risk.

Requirements
=======================

- Python 2.4 or greater (may still work with 2.3)
- A portage snapshot (or portage tree to make your own)
- A Gentoo seed stage tarball
- shash for digest support

What is Catalyst?
========================

Catalyst is the Gentoo Linux project's release building tool. With catalyst,
you are able to completely customize your Gentoo install by customizing
the very tools you install your system with.

Catalyst is capable of:

- Building installation stages for every architecture supported by Gentoo.
- Building bootable LiveCDs for every architecture supported by Gentoo.
- Building GRP (Gentoo Reference Platform) sets for every architecture supported by Gentoo.
- Setting up a Tinderbox target for test building.
- Building netboot images.

Configuring catalyst
========================

After emerging catalyst, the first thing (and probably only thing)
that you will have to do is edit /etc/catalyst/catalyst.conf to your liking.

Example catalyst.conf:

distdir="/usr/portage/distfiles"
options="pkgcache kerncache"
sharedir="/usr/lib/catalyst"

There are many more options that can be set, but those defaults are good
for out of the box operation. For more documentation on what you can do
with catalyst, please check the man page or the online documentation at
<http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/releng/catalyst>.