Something that was bothering me over past couple of weeks. I know that iso image is transferred to target device using rsync. It simple copies the files and directories from /run/archiso/airootfs to /mnt. In the past ArchBang used a different method where I copied over / files to target device but had to exclude a number of directories to make it work. Then I decided many years ago to make things much easier and simply copy the actual image files to target device, this makes things quicker and far easier to manage.
But what if you did want to modify live and have it added to installation? Well I may have come up with a solution, by using cowspace persistence folders [which are part of archsio]. Simply put by adding another rsync command you can copy over all changes that you have made live to target device. So if you wanted to run Xfce4 instead of Openbox you would install packages, make changes to .xinitrc and then install as normal.
Now if you do not have a network connection live then this may not be of much use, but you could still make changes to system live that would be present in new install. General changes such as themes, font sizes, openbox settings etc.
Depending on system specs this would of course take longer to transfer files to new install depending on what changes you have made.
Tested and I do know it works, code is part of abinstall but for now it is not active, need to to make user aware during install that process is taking place.
If anyone is interested in testing it then please contact me and I will tell you how to do it and it is very easy to do 😉
Stay safe….