[baldfat]

> Traditionally it's your distribution's job to create and provide packages

That has not been true in my 15 years of Linux. Look at bitsync, rstudio, or other major programs. Arch Linux must build off of the source so that isn't a fair comparison you are on a totally different system (port).

EDIT: Here is the one page of documentation to push out deba nd rpm on mono projects. http://www.mono-project.com/docs/getting-started/install/lin...

I have seen electron applications (pinta isn't built on electron but mono) and in the same way ONLY Ubuntu is advertised under Linux. The ability to automatically build Linux formats is built into the framework and still don't add RPM.

Linux: AppImage, deb, rpm, freebsd, pacman, p5p, apk.

Still other eclectron applications do the same thing and ONLY provide Ubuntu and not provide the Deb or RPM with source.

Look at the download page it says Linux and directly under it has a Ubuntu Logo and a ppa link. When I down load any of my commercial or major software there is always a RPM and a DEB with a tar.

Linux Support = RPM (The official Linux Foundation package) DEB and Source.

I use OpenSUSE and they have awesome build service that allows people to build packages for SUSE but also RPM, Arch and anyone else you want to add.

https://software.opensuse.org/package/pinta

[darklajid]

(For this discussion, Arch Linux is working exactly like Debian/Fedora/Suse etc. - installing binary packages.)

In my time with Linux using anything other than your distributions package tools is an exception and extremely rare. You might do that for - say - bitsync, because it is proprietary. Your distribution cannot use the same 'grab sources, compile against our current libraries and package it up' process.

pinta instead follows the normal process. You install it by using your package tools. Your distributions created binary packages for you already, hosted on their infrastructure.

Heck, even on Ubuntu you'd probably apt-get install pinta and get a different (Ubuntu provided) package instead.

Check http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ and see what they do if you want to download their software (they tell you that your distribution is in charge and even mention why that is usually a good idea).

PPAs and OBS offer ways to build packages, yes. But again, that's the exception - most of your packages aren't coming from there.

[baldfat]

> (For this discussion, Arch Linux is working exactly like Debian/Fedora/Suse etc. - installing binary packages.) It isn't its a ports system it compiles off of source.

The Arch Build System is a ports-like system for building and packaging software from source code. While pacman is the specialized Arch tool for binary package management (including packages built with the ABS), ABS is a collection of tools for compiling source into installable .pkg.tar.xz packages.

I have built and maintained packages for RPM and for Arch. They are different and that is the reason why in electron export Arch has a different system then deb or rpm.

> In my time with Linux using anything other than your distributions package tools is an exception and extremely rare.

That is your experience. Most Ubuntu and Arch people use AUR or ppa all the time. If I want the preview of RStudio (Open sourced and in my official repos) I down load and use the RPM. I do this all the time. If I want anything that was recently released I need to use the RPM and not the packages provided by my disto including rolling releases.

> Check http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ and see what they do if you want to download their software (they tell you that your distribution is in charge and even mention why that is usually a good idea).

I don't find much with the Gimp project to show as a positive example for other applications to follow.

> PPAs and OBS offer ways to build packages, yes. But again, that's the exception - most of your packages aren't coming from there.

Once again that isn't my experience and that is open to other people's needs. If you use AUR you also are not getting your packages from your official repos. Build a AUR and you will see. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository

AUR are awesome BECAUSE it works with the source files in a port system. The only difference between a AUR and a binary you get from pacman is that it was compiled for you to skip the step of downloading the source and compile like you do in AUR.

[darklajid]

I'm confused why you're trying to educate me about Arch. And you're confusing things (maybe you think of Gentoo? That one is "mostly from source, can support binaries").

Yes, ABS is used to build binary Arch Linux packages from sources. But that's unrelated. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat, Suse - all of these do the same: Grab the sources, build binary packages. Whether you're using ABS or build rpms from a specfile doesn't matter for the discussion about upstream's (lack of!) responsibility to provide binary packages for random distributions.

So yes .. Arch is, for the sake of this discussion, working exactly like Debian/Fedora/Suse etc: The distribution (pick any from that list or any major distribution you can come up with) takes the pinta sources and builds a package from that. The end user installs a (binary) package using the distribution's package management facilities without ever touching the pinta source. The package comes directly from the distribution's infrastructure and not pinta's project site.

[baldfat]

Okay you see apples I see oranges. I find packaging for Arch's port system to be pretty fundamentally different then for the binaries of RPM or Deb but its okay.

I still stand by the need to provide RPM, Deb and Source for your project to be called Linux supported. Also Ubunutu does not equal Linux.

Here is VS Code as an example https://code.visualstudio.com/?utm_expid=101350005-28.R1T8Fs...