Catalyst is the Gentoo toolkit to build stages as well as live environments, here is how to use it.
Prepare Environment
Catalyst does a lot of building and a lot of I/O work, things will work better for you if you have a machine with plenty of horsepower. Our primary build machine (c.2011) is an eight core with eight G RAM.
This describes how to use Catalyst to build a Stage1, Stage2 and the Stage3 LiveCD/LiveDVD or LiveUSB
First install Catalyst on your system, which must be a Gentoo/Praxis type system.
emerge -av catalyst ccache lzop
Building Release Stages
Release stages are the Stage3 and Stage4 packages.
## Make Snapshot emerge --sync catalyst -s $name ## Make Stage1 catalyst --file stage1-live.spec catalyst --file stage2-live.spec
Building Live Media
Use these steps to build a Live CD, DVD or USB system.
## Make Snapshot emerge --sync catalyst -s $name ## Make Stage1 catalyst --config catalyst.conf --file stage1-live.spec catalyst --config catalyst.conf --file stage2-live.spec ## catalyst --config catalyst.conf --file stage2.spec