[zygology]

I've been working on this for the last year or so: https://github.com/desultory/ugrd

It's mostly made to work with Gentoo (uses pax-utils for finding dependencies), but should work with any distro. It does most of the initramfs creation process rootless. The main consideration is that you need privileges to make device nodes, but I just create them synthetically within the cpio image.

On most systems, this tool still requires root to copy the mount binary.

[snac]

This is right up my alley, I’d love for a more programmatic way to generate initramfs. Being able to template different use cases would be great for specific appliances. One of my projects aims to create a hackable minimal Linux distro, and thinking about extension has always been on my mind. https://github.com/snacsnoc/snacklinux

Have you found any specific niches that scratch an itch with your tool?