Slimming OS X to a minimal image

[tedjuda]

I'm looking for guides or tools to help in reducing the size of an OS X installation to a minimum. It would also be interesting to hear what success anyone has had in slimming OS X. I have tried asking about this among general Mac developers, but I typically get a rather hostile reaction.

The principle use-case I'm concerned with is when having an application that is only available for OS X, how to reduce OS X to just what is needed to run that app, and distribute it as an OS+app image to run on VirtualBox.

Another case could be when running multiple VMs on a machine, to reduce the footprint of each instance.

[Donk]

Well I would start with the OS X installer. When you create the recovery partition or a USB Drive for installation you get the minimal boot requirements. Perhaps the actual installer app could be replaced with whatever you want to use.

[tedjuda]

Well I would start with the OS X installer. When you create the recovery partition or a USB Drive for installation you get the minimal boot requirements. Perhaps the actual installer app could be replaced with whatever you want to use.

This sounds promising. Is there any documentation that details the minimal boot requirements or how to manipulate the installer in this way?

 

I also just found http://www.appzapper.com/, which looks like it might be useful.

[tedjuda]

I had hoped to find discussion of something like TinyXP for Windows, but it seems there is generally no interest in this kind of project.

 

Another utility that might be helpful is Pacifist for browsing the installer package.

http://www.charlessoft.com/