As a proof of concept I decided to give my idea a go of creating a squashfs filesystem with some very very very basic development tools....
Based on the sources and instructions from Linux From Scratch 5.1 it contains the following
filename opttools.sfs
size 54024K
- 1. binutils-2.14
2. dejagnu-1.4.4
3. diffutils-1.4.4
4. expect-5.41
5. findutils-4.1.20
6. gawk-3.1.3
7. gcc-3.3.3
8. gettext-0.14.1
9. glibc-2.3.3-lfs-5.1
10. grep-2.5.1
11. linux-headers-2.4.26
12. make-3.80
13. ncurses-5.4
14. patch-2.5.4
15. perl-5.8.4
16. sed-4.0.9
17 tcl8.4.6
18 textinfo-4.7
Upadte
Just used this configuration to compile a kernel.
Like I said it is a proof of concept at the moment, and I don't expect to compile anything that uses any other libraries than those contained in glibc. What it should let you do is compile some very very console apps....Probably anything that you would find in an introduction to C programming guide...
As a test I mount the filesystem at /opt/tools (it cannot be mounted anywhere else in the filesystem) and compiled and executed the de-riguer "hello world app".
At the moment the squashfs file is about 54 - 55 meg all binaries and libs have been stripped and most docs removed.
What I envision is that all libs,includes and utilities required to compile apps and a kernel would be included so that a development platform is created that should not (?) affect Puppy.The beauty, to me anyways, of doing it this way is if you are running a hd install or running from a live cd you should be able to compile apps, providing you have enough writable disk space.
This is my first attempt at doing something such as this and I would like to hear from some more knowledgable Puppy users who would like to help in testing.