[aur-general] Adding a .deb packaged application to the AUR

[Smartboy]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Jeff Horelick <jdhore1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Listmates,
>
> I have a package here i'd really like to add to the AUR. The problem is
> that
> its packaged in a .deb. How would i go about packaging this for Arch? Feel
> free to just point at: "Look at this other package" or "Read this wiki
> page".
>
> In case some of you guys don't know the formmat that a .deb is in:
>
> An ar archive, inside there are 2 tarballs, one called control.tar.gz which
> for our purposes can be mostly ignored and one called data.tar.gz which has
> the actual application files laid out in the directory structure of the
> system similar to a Arch final binary package. (usr/bin/stuff,
> usr/share/stuff and so on).
>
> Or would it be easier for me to just setup a GitHub or BitBucket account,
> drop all the source files on there and simply make a hg or git package?
> (For
> the record and all, it's not my project, but it is GPLv2 so....)
>
Use deb2targz to convert it to a binary suitable for integration with a
pkgbuild. It would be better to just put the source files in GitHub, though,
as using sources is preferred over binaries in Arch.

If you want an example of a PKGBUILD which converts a binary deb package to
a tar.gz, see my oz-e17-tools
package<http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23227>
.

Smartboy