How to build an minimalistic image?

[darinkes]

I want to build an minimalistic image where just needed packages are installed.

I'm doing this in an Ubuntu 22.04 WSL Instance:

make toolchain REBUILD_TOOLS=y
make image -j$(nproc) REBUILD_TOOLS=n REBUILD_PACKAGES=n CONFIG_FILE=imageconfigs/minimal-os.json

But I noticed after booting the created vhdx in HyperV that way more packages are installed than there are defined in the minimal-os-packages.json config file. For example gcc, perl and a lot of other stuff which are not a dependency.

So my question is, if and how you can build an image with just the packages defined (plus dependencies) in the PackageLists JSONs?

[darinkes]

Issue seems to be that I need the xorg-x11-server-Xvfb package, that seems to depend on something needing perl and that depends on gcc.

I'm not sure the dependency of perl to perl-ExtUtils-CBuilder is correct.
That way you automatically end up with gcc, when installing perl.

Any ideas how to avoid this?