Apparently there is a thread dedicated exactly to this topic, which clearly describes the struggle one faces when building his own ISO:
And in fact the last reply, clearly states that getting the exact same build as the official ISO, actually you’ll have to build it at exactly the same time (or roughly so), before some of the actual dependent packages or build scripts are changed, after which it will yield a somewhat different build:
This is why I stress once more the need for an alternative license for home users…
In fact I’m starting to ponder if I wouldn’t be better off with reverting to a plain Linux distribution based router, especially given how few features I actually need…
Especially given how poorly some of the VyOS features integrate one-with-another, and I’m forced to resort to hacking the resulting deploy image (like for example I had to write a script to change iptables rules to actually get WAN load-balancing to work, and recently to override the way L2TP configuration files are generated)…