Setting up the build environment on HDD
Introduction
In earlier days, Alpine used a separate Gentoo build environment. Nowadays we build in Alpine itself, and things are much simpler.
We will host this build environment on a HDD installed Alpine, using the "edge" repository.
Another method is to setup a clean Alpine build environment inside another system, using a chroot or some form of virtualization. The host system may also be Alpine, or may be something else.
Boot your build environment
Boot the latest Alpine Linux image on a box with a HDD.
Basic setup
Set basic environment settings (when prompted for disk, select the disk(s) that you wish to use, and use them in sys mode. Note that if you specify two disks, soft raid will be setup on them automatically).
setup-alpine
For more details, see Installation or setup-alpine.
Change your repository to use "edge"
Contents of /etc/apk/repositories
Update/upgrade your system
apk update apk upgrade
Next, setup your system and account for building packages.
Then reboot your system.
Start building packages
Now you can move on to creating packages for Alpine.