1. let makepkg work with icc this patch is inspired by the gentoo wiki page http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/ICC First of all, you should install icc of course, see http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=2252 Add your icc CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS($ICCCFLAGS & $ICCCXXFLAGS) to /etc/makepkg.conf. Add "icc" to the BUILDENV array in /etc/makepkg.conf Add packages' names (one per line) you want to compiled with icc to /etc/package.icc, if a package is not listed in this file, it will be compiled with gcc. Add per-package CFLAGS for packages(package's name followed by CFLAGS per line) you want to compiled with icc to /etc/package.icc-cflags. A few packages benefit greatly from the -O3 flag like python and sqlite according to the gentoo wiki. 2. let makepkg install custom license automatically When making packages whose licenses are "custom", we use PKGBUILD to install the license file manually. Since it is a common step for those packages, why not let makepkg do that automatically? Just specify $licensefile in your PKGBUILD(like $licensefile=LICENSE) and ensure the license file is in $startdir, it then will be automatically install to $pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/$pkgname/$licensefile when packaging. -- best regards, hunt