Octave minimal virtual image for development

seeing the difficulties the potential GSOD student has mentioned, plus
other conversations about difficulties on Mac, Windows, etc., a virtualbox
or equivalent image has been suggested several times.

What would a minimal virtual box image prepared to clone/setup an Octave
development environment look like? would it be of a reasonable size to
include on the download server alongside the binary installers?  I know a
fully setup virtual image can be big, and there are limits to reasonable
server storage space.  But what about something with the just OS set up and
a set of scripts to set up the cloned source and whatever build
dependencies are needed? Maybe some of those dependencies could be
preinstalled in the image if they aren't too hefty?

Or at that point would it be more trouble than it's worth?  But maybe
that's too much handholding? Easier to just make a wiki instruction set for
'download vb' 'setup linux vm' 'follow linux build instructions',
especially if you're targeting a potential developer? (I guess such a VM
would be useful for those trying to run the latest & greatest version of
Octave too.)