| > (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. |
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.