build.sh
aos_live.iso (in case you do not have a system to build from, includes instructions)

To install AOS:
  1. download build.sh above and place it in a subdirectory
  2. within the subdirectory create another subdirectory named root and mount the partition you wish to install AOS on to it
  3. optionally create subdirectories and mount other partitions that you want to be part of the filesystem layout
  4. run ./build.sh
  5. wait for the build to finish, you will be prompted with the linux configuration menu and possibly be asked to install programs required for the build
  6. follow the final instructions given by the buildscript
  7. install a bootloader (the buildscript won't do this for you), e.g. grub, lilo, syslinux, or isolinux if you want to make a liveCD.

You can pass the flag -h or --help to the buildscript to get a complete list of supported options.
Some neat options are:
  • -t / --tmux: launch the build in tmux with a pane with messages for each step, e.g. "configure glibc: done", "build glibc: done"
  • --progressbar: also add a progressbar pane (has to be combined with -t/--tmux)
  • -i / --noninteractive: try to avoid steps that require interaction, useful to test the buildscript or to build a userspace where the kernel doesn't matter (the kernel configuration is the main interactive part)

The above instructions can of course be tweaked, for example the second and third steps can be skipped entirely if you just want a test environment to chroot into.
If you pass -i or --noninteractive to the buildscript you won't have to configure the kernel in step 5.
If you're doing the build as root (not really recommended) you don't need to do step 6 as it has to do with file ownership and permissions which will already be correct then.
If you already have a bootloader or only plan to chroot into the environment you can skip step 7.

Packages
For installing additional packages once booted into AOS you can look up build instructions in the BuildWiki. If you're lazy you can use the wiki2shell script to get the instructions ready as shellscripts.

Building from liveCD
If you wish to build AOS from a liveCD, remember that files on liveCD systems are normally stored in RAM which is limited and probably can't hold all the files required for the build (not counting the root directory where a partition should be mounted).
To overcome this problem you can instead create a 'build' directory within the partition (where it's mounted doesn't matter here), and within 'build' symlink 'root' to '..' (parent directory)
That way all the files will be on the harddrive instead of in RAM, and when the build is finished you can erase the 'build' directory.