Thank you for the suggestion. I tried opening it with ark (which checks about 15 archive types including 7zip) but it failed. 2011/2/9 Sven-Hendrik Haase

Michael Schubert wrote:

Hi, I am already maintaining a couple of PKGBUILDs and wanted to add one for CellDesigner, which is used to model biochemical pathways. The download is only available as binary package with its own installer. Now, I thought that I could use the installer inside a PKGBUILD with $pkgdir as root. However, the installer cross-references some files in others with absolute paths, i.e. when the package is installed it still links to the build dir instead of the system dir. Because of the way the cross-refs are inserted, simple sed'ing these does not work. The obvious solution would be to use fakeroot/chroot in the $pkgdir and use to to emulate a root directory structure. My question now is: (1) am I on the right track and (2) is there any standard way to do this in PKGBUILDs? I couldn't find any sample PKGBUILDs concerning this issue and the ArchWiki contains no information either. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Michael

You often can extract the archive portion of a binary installer using 7zip. Try that first.

Cédric Girard writes:

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Michael Schubert wrote:

...

The download is only available as binary package with its own installer.

Do you have a direct link to the download? I would like to take a look but the only one I could find is through a registration process.

Regards,

Try this URL: http://www.systems-biology.org/download/download.php?swf=CellDesigner-4.1-li... installer.bin Otherwise you can just login with this email to get to the download page: biology@mailinator.com

Yes, you are right. However, I do have one or two other installer-only packages as well that I would like to provide PKGBUILDs for and don't require registration (the above was more of an example - the archive issues may or may not arise). Also, I think circumventing registration processes is ok as long as it isn't required to use the software, i.e., the application GPL'd or something alike. In this case it is not GPL'd, so there might be a licensing issue as well, although there is no "you have to register to use this software clause" - let's see what the authors think ;) Thus my initial question lacks a valid example now because the other installers may well be extractable. Consider it solved, if I run into a specific problem I will post it again. 2011/2/10 Cédric Girard

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 2:11 AM, Kevin <31337h4ck3r@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Cédric Girard writes:

...

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Michael Schubert wrote:

...

The download is only available as binary package with its own

installer.

...

...

Do you have a direct link to the download? I would like to take a look but the only one I could find is through a registration process.

Regards,

Try this URL:

http://www.systems-biology.org/download/download.php?swf=CellDesigner-4.1-li...

...

installer.bin

Thanks but it needs a registration as well. What I wanted to point out is that Michael PKGBUILD won't be able to download the source file.

-- Cédric Girard