core-image-minimal-initramfs includes a recipe "initramfs-live-boot" which installs a simple /init script to mount /proc and /sys and execute the shell. This can be handled by busybox provided it has the INIT feature enabled (and we do by default). I'm sending patches for busybox to include a /init link to /bin/busybox shortly.

It also installs (and therefor depends on) udev. We shouldn't need udev for the the initramfs, Linux kernel support for devtmpfs should be adequate.

I suspect that base-passwd is also not necessary.

With these changes we should be able to remove some dependencies and shrink the size of the initramfs slightly.

(This is a low priority nice-to-have, but I ran across it and didn't want to lose the thought.)