When I began creating FirstRib in 2019 I purposively did not want to involve any version control system like used by woof-CE.
Rather I wanted a simple build system involving one or two simple shell scripts that many on the forum could instantly use and understand without needing to learn how to use the likes of git to push, pull, commit, raise issues, or seek permission to merge any code ideas of their own.
FirstRib in fact consists of only two necessary/core parts:
1. A root filesystem, which for most flexibility can be optionally built with the help of a single shell script called 'build_firstrib_rootfs' or, pretty much any (but not all) existing pre-built root filesystems such as those provided in repos by Void Linux, Ubuntu, or Arch, or special ones originally designed for inclusion in docker containers for example.
and
2. The FirstRib initrd, which is provided pre-built as a skeleton FR initrd (that doesn't contain any embedded driver modules, which can be used directly with a Puppy-style huge kernel/modules combination, or have any required boot modules added to it as part of the build process), or can be built from scratch using another simple shell script currently called build_wiak_initrd.
In practice, if build_firstrib_rootfs is used to create the distro's main root filesystem, that by itself only builds a very basic root filesystem (with a choice of one using no package manager or one from either Void Linux, Arch Linux, Devuan, Debian, or Ubuntu). Most of the resulting distro design is actually then determined by a simple text plugin for use by that script, which is created by the user who wants to make a new distro. For example, that simple plugin may use the chosen repo package manager to install Wayland, or X, or JWM, or XFCE, or Gnome, or pipewire, and contain any configuration code wanted and so on - whatever the distro designer wants to include, dependent on what the upstream repo and their own scripting and knowledge can provide (but... the upstream repo can provide most everything in practice, so no great experience/knowledge is necessarily required).
Similarly, the FR initrd, includes the ability to utilise a user-provided plugin, which has the filename 'w_init', which is simply a text file containing shell script code that determines, for example, the structure and composition of the overlay structure and more. Since that w_init is external to the compressed initrd it can be easily edited at any time in a text editor (and used on next boot) and thus the facilities provided by the FR initrd system changed according to the user expertise and wishes. If no external w_init is provided, the internal to the initrd w_init will be used by default instead, but the external w_init takes preference if it is available. Users can thus provide their own customised w_init creations for others to use without needing any modification to the compressed FR initrd itself. In fact, I use a customised w_init to create my recently contributed KL_full2frugal system but still used the current stable FR compressed initrd along with that external w_init. Admittedly, modifying the behaviour of an initrd in any major way is not for beginners nor the faint of heart - the initrd/w_init combination is indeed the heart of the frugal install system functionality...
So, overall, it is a simple to use, simply implemented, build system that nevertheless has proved itself capable of building many shapes and forms and types of distro, to any level of sophistication, the user/builder wants.
I tend to store my own copies of FirstRib build scripts and the skeleton initrd on rockedge's kindly provided owncloud storage site. I do have some personal git sites of my own, as it happens, mainly to store the code for various business websites I maintain, but sometimes simply as alternative repos, to store some code in, rather than really for their version control facilities.
I don't myself in practice build many distros of my own. I started a few off, but I well-recognise that others are much better than I am at producing user-friendly fuller-featured desktops than I ever would be. Different people have different talents. Hence most FR-based distros aren't made by myself at all, which is great, because I prefer to step back and let others own the results of their own creations, which I can then use too... I continue to maintain the underlying build scripts (which are all MIT liberal licensed opensource), and both myself and others have added various useful build and system helper utilities (such as modify_initrd.sh and mount_chroot.sh), and adapted some from other forum distros, such as save2flash/snapmergepuppy and so on.
Nothing more to say about the matter really - I'll leave others to tell you whether the build system is easy to use or not. The existing KL distros, created on the whole by others, certainly shows that it works.