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. (-:
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!
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...