[wallacoloo]

> It seemed to me to create an install package for a piece of software, the process (according to the docs) was to install the software "manually" and keep track of where everything goes. Then, once you have done that (and the software is running fine), you are supposed to create your package manifesto (or whatever it was called) that tells the system how to install it, then take all the parts and bundle them up (as a compressed file of some sort) with that manifesto. Oh - and then manually "uninstall" your software you installed, then use your new package to re-install your now-packaged proprietary software.

This might be technically correct (not completely sure), but hugely misleading. Packages are defined by PKGBUILD scripts. When you run `makepkg` to create a package, it creates a directory called $pkgdir. In your PKGBUILD, you just delegate to whatever installer came with the source code & tell it to install into $pkgdir. e.g. `make install --prefix=$pkgdir`. makepkg takes all the files in $pkgdir and tars them and bam - there's your package.

If you look in most PKGBUILDs, they contain some metadata (where to get the sources, etc), and then it's more or less:

    build() {  
        cd "$srcdir" && make  
    }  
    package() {  
        cd "$srcdir" && make install --prefix="$pkgdir"  
    }

That's all you need for quite a few packages.

[JdeBP]

cr0sh posited that the application being packaged was not in source form. So perhaps the hugely misleading thing is to argue against xem based upon how one packages up things that are in source form. (-:

[wallacoloo]

Well as long as it ships with an installer, the above method still works - just omit the build step altogether (do a chroot if the installer doesn't offer a choice of where to install). If it doesn't have an installer, but comes self-contained, then just `cp $srcdir $pkgdir/opt` & call that good.

And if you're dealing with a non-source package that doesn't have an installer and isn't self-contained, then installing/packaging it is difficult on any OS - not just Arch!

For reference, here's a PKGBUILD for a non-source, proprietary application. It's pretty much as above, but includes some fancy .desktop files & such, too. https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=disco...