Hi Richard,
You can compile the rest of libguestfs, but first copy the 'kernel' file into 'appliance/vmlinuz.fedora-12.x86_64.img' and the 'initrd' file into 'appliance/initramfs.fedora-12.x86_64.img', before doing the rest of the build.
The configure will still require for febootstrap or debootstrap, and I've no febootstrap ported to gentoo. So If configure detects debootstrap the compilation will probably look for debian appliance, so I can probably simply rename the fedora appliance/{initramfs,vmlinuz}.fedora-12.x86_64.img to whatever the debian based make will be looking for, if so to what names should i rename the fedora initramfs and vmlinuz?
I'm hoping that the build will notice that these files have already been created and not try to rebuild them, but I haven't actually tried this. You might want to read the Makefile.am's and ping me on our IRC channel for a bit more help with this.
It would be nice if there would be a configure option to tell the build process to use a specified appliance.
Also can I use non fedora & debian but use some minimal gentoo based appliance I have?
Probably not. You cannot use any random appliance, since it needs to have specific software installed, and a specific /init script etc.
How/where do i find the specific requirements of libguestfs appliance so that I could try to build a gentoo appliance meeting these requirements? Thanks Alex
However you can use the Fedora or Debian appliance _on_ a Gentoo host no problem (ie. option (3)).
It should also be possible to (e)build a Gentoo appliance, which would definitely be the best option here!