First of all, after some time of going for i586, we finally chose i686 as the target architecture for Arch Hurd. I updated all the packages and PKGBUILDs and this topic is hopefully done now.
Secondly, and far more interesting, we now have a pacman package and packages for all its dependencies. Using the packages currently available it is possible to create some kind of media (e.g.: a qemu image) that can update from the repository. This way you won't have to create/change your images all the time if something changes.
Here is a short instruction on how to use pacman on Arch Linux to build your Arch Hurd image. This is not a step by step instruction because this is dangerous if you don't understand what you are doing. So if this instruction is not detailed enough for you please wait until some easier form of installation is available.
- Copy your pacman.conf to a dir of your choice and change the RootDir, CacheDir, DBPath and the path of your mirrorlist file.
- Make a new mirrorlist and use http://files.archhurd.org/repo/$repo as Server
- Never use sudo to call pacman for this, USE FAKEROOT
- Use pacman normally but always with the --config your_pacman.conf option.
- It's easiest to just install all packages in the repo
- Once you have installed all packages see the Installation page on how to continue(start with Creating the qemu image)
I hope this instruction is useful enough for some people to try it without breaking their systems :D
Good luck!