JeroenVanMeeuwen/Revisor/RemixHowto

Remixing Fedora

This document is a short HOWTO on Remixing Fedora.

What do you do?

Remixing Fedora is taking whatever Fedora ships and mixing it into your own set of packages (installation media) or installed software (live media).

Configure the Fedora Repositories

The GUI has a dialog with which you can add repositories to the configuration once you load a model. In the Revisor Configuration dialog, press Add Repository and fill out the form.

To use additional repositories for use with CLI mode however, you must configure the Fedora Repositories you would like to use in the appropriate configuration file. Mind that you do not need to edit anything if you are just going to customize the package set and use Fedora parts only, unless you have a local repository and do not want to use the online repositories. Some of you however would like to add 3rd party repositories, whether it be your own local repository for software you use within your company, or any 3rd party repository "out there". Read the documentation on Rebranding Fedora if you are adding any non-Fedora parts and plan on distributing the product you're about to compose.

You could use one of the files in /etc/revisor/conf.d. We'll take f7-i386 (in /etc/revisor/revisor.conf) as an example model.

From /etc/revisor/revisor.conf, the main configuration directive in the [f7-i386] configuration section indicates that the yum configuration is in /etc/revisor/conf.d/revisor-f7-i386.conf:

[f7-i386] 
main = /etc/revisor/conf.d/revisor-f7-i386.conf
product_name = Fedora
product_path = Fedora
iso_basename = F
comps = /etc/revisor/comps-f7.xml
architecture = i386
version = 7
getsource = 0

Edit /etc/revisor/conf.d/revisor-f7-i386.conf if you want to add, edit or remove any repositories. Mind that if you add 3rd party repositories, the product is for personal use only. If you are going to distribute the product in anyway, read the [../RebrandHowto Rebrand Fedora Howto] document as well.

Creating the Remix

From this point, you can launch Revisor and either run it 'unattended' (CLI mode using a kickstart file), or select your packages in the GUI mode.

Using Comps.xml When Remixing

Revisor (nor any other tool), is currently able to 'recreate' the comps.xml file. This means you will need to manually add the packages to a group, or add a group entirely, if you want the packages to appear in the category/groups list of the anaconda installer. We strongly advise you to copy the comps.xml file you have configured in the model to a safe place which won't be overwritten by updates, and edit the configuration in /etc/revisor/revisor.conf to reflect using that copy. The comps files shipped with Revisor get overwritten to reflect translation updates as well as addition, edits and removal of packages from groups.