User:Slowpoke/Overlay Tutorial

= Overview =

Since I haven't found a good, comprehensive tutorial on how to create your own overlay (with all the gritty details), I've set out to write my own while I go along. Consider this a work in progress.

= Preparations =

Directory Structure
First, we need to set up a directory structure somewhere. For simplicity, we will use $HOME/overlay, but you could also use /usr/local/overlay or anywhere else you feel like.

Metadata
An overlay requires a name and some metadata.

Version Control
We will use git to maintain our overlay. Feel free to use another VCS if you want to.

If you have never used git or another VCS before - fear not, they have an excellent tutorial on their site.

First, we create the git repository (make sure you are in the top level directory of your overlay, $HOME/overlay in our case).

Next, we add the files we created in the previous section to the repository.

Finally, we commit our changes.