Hi all,
Sorry to resurrect an old-ish thread, but I am facing the exact same task, minus the know-how. Basically I am looking to pre-configure a number of Debian setups - let's say, "server", "laptop" and "PC" - that would contain sets of packages to install (or uninstall), configuration files (including but not limited to /etc/), and possibly arbitrary scripts to execute upon installation (e.g. to make more precise edits to configs). I would like to store these in some central, git-controlled location where I could pull them from to my target machines. This kind of setup could be rather low-level, such as configuring APT sources and preferences, installing and configuring systemd-networkd, etc. Ideally, I would also be able to incorporate these into a Debian installer so I could get a new machine "up and running" with my defaults in one go. It is worth adding that I am not looking to build an "infrastructure", and no setup *between* these machines (networking, file sharing, etc.) is necessary. Generally, I would rather avoid complicated tools like Ansible and those with large dependencies such as interpreted languages (except Perl). So far, equivs and config-package-dev appear most relevant, but the former is somewhat lacking in documentation (or I am in documentation-finding ability), and the latter seems to be focused on config editing/deployment rather than package installation. Would be grateful for some advice!
