The added pdir check was a hillarious(tm) overlooked bug indeed:
I tried to put .../initfs/initfs instead of .../initfs as the result.

Duly spotted by torabora@, thanks a lot.

Still the kmod+propagator+kernel-image combo needed some tweaking too,
see #27640

A tiny bit less cut-n-paste. :)

The issue actually hit image.in/Makefile: "metadata" target
in features.in/metadata/lib/50-metadata.mk wasn't reached
even if features.in/build-distro/lib/90-build-distro.mk
would ACK that the "whatever" actions included "metadata";
thus Metadata/pkg-groups.tar wasn't created and the installer
silently failed to install the .base system.

Let's armour the rest of the cases where the order of inclusion
might be important as well.

The culprit would be that $RELNAME isn't really set there
($GLOBAL_RELNAME is), and sh -u will treat that as error.

It's pretty ugly but dropping the current way
means losing the dependency tracking which is
critical to get the required alterator module
into install2.

- fixed build with recent make-initrd-propagator

Thanks mithraen@ for spotting, boyarsh@ for explaining,
and legion@ for hearty support :)

The problem would manifest itself like this:

  /.host/script.sh: line 20: /usr/lib64/propagator/initfs: \
  No such file or directory
  mki-scripts: .../stage1/scripts.d/80-make-initfs: unable to run script.

Thanks Serg Markov for bringing my attention to this:
http://www.opennet.ru/openforum/vsluhforumID3/86552.html#61

While the official distros might skip some filesystems for
support reasons there's no reason for community distros to
do so either.

Let's try that with icewm.iso...

NB: installer has a misfeature of dropping jfs/reiserfs
    support in runtime unless "expertmode" magic word
    is on the kernel bootargs string (#27763, #17368).

The problem would manifest itself like this:

..:..:.. cleaning up after build
sed: can't read .../build.log: No such file or directory

Asked for by torabora@; indeed.

Should be a tiny bit better this way.

Its immediate purpose was influencing the GRUB boot menu
*but* the implemented mechanism is actually a part of the
long planned text branding and might be further merged
into branding when hierarchical features finally chime in.

So let's get the naming straight before it breeds.

File contents should be correct.

- misc fixes

See http://www.opennet.ru/openforum/vsluhforumID3/86239.html#1
for a query that has led to this one; in particular,
- xdm dropped (won't log in root and there are no users yet);
- network is brought up and configured via DHCP by default;
- apt-get works out-of-box;
- default image size is twice the chroot size.

3.5.2-std-def-alt2 brings boot problems which were absent
with 3.4.x-std-def and are absent with 3.5.x-un-def;
seems like it's better to stay with known good variant
at the moment instead of having to fall back to it.

It was missing indeed; suggested by ildar@.

hsh-initroot leaves the chroot's root directory permissions
as 1775 while these should really be 755 at most; let's fix it
(important for both VE and VM images, useful for rescue/livecd
ones as well -- especially those with an installer onboard).

Thanks aen@ for finally mentioning it
as I just used to cope without su. :)

The missing "; @:" at the end of the otherwise recipeless rule
resulted in target graph being broken; I should have checked this
when introducing these aliases (the intent was to reduce noise).

It appears that chkconfig wasn't getting pulled in
by now if not told so explicitly.  Still in need.

Not even alpha quality yet but at least debuggable:
- X session doesn't autostart but service dm start works;
- keyboard layout indicator is missing until started by hand.

There's a bunch of additions to the MATE package list:
thanks viy@ for pulling extras into autoimports,
several more tweaks done due to hints by dek@,
and openssh packages added for debugging convenience.

The kernel's been changed for the latest one (un-def).

Someone over the internets suggested that such a LiveCD exist:
http://www.opennet.ru/openforum/vsluhforumID3/85817.html#24
...but then disappeared in the thin air, sigh.

- stage2@live

There's no use of a rescue image when it has no firmware
for the controller in the system being worked on...
so added some.

This isn't ready for general consumption (just as centos one)
but the notion of REPO is floating around along with apt-conf
thoughts, and it might still be useful to someone poking around
conf.d/test.mk.

Request hasher-pkg-init.spec from mike@ or led@ if interested;
the experiments were carried out using openSUSE 11.4 repository
and slightly patched hasher (cpio blacklist for devices).

A few more items were asking for some attention.

In particular, build examples should start with
the most basic, error-proof and quick targets.

This part of docs was pleading to put it into a small shell
script; it was done to facilitate kas@' debugging efforts
so that qemu-system-ppc might eventually get fixed, thus
livecd-qemu-arch package now "obsoletes" this file.

Thanks both drool@ for his mild frustration with the current
documentation as well as Greg Kroah-Hartman, Heikki Orsila
and Neil Brown for http://lwn.net/Articles/504814/ -- the docs
should really emphasize *why* something is done, not *how*,
as the "how" part is better documented with the code itself
(that doesn't mean that "the big picture" isn't needed).

That sub/stage2/install2 was somewhat clumsy actually as it looked
like a hierarchical thing while being a substitution thing:
generic stage2 would get put in place renamed as install2.

This could only get worse with hierarchical features which have
already been both requested and considered for quite a time,
and "stage2 at install2" reads much more naturally.

Finishes what 3dd02033
has essentially done... the path seems to be elsewhere.

Don't remember who exactly recommended this nice and elegant
system monitor but it fits just fine.