Hi all, I'm wondering whether there is a program in Arch Linux that can automatically convert .deb package into .pkg.tar.gz/xz, which can be conveniently installed by pacman.

I ask this because I use checkinstall to install binaries compiled from source. And checkinstall doesn't support .pkg.tar.gz/xz yet.

Thanks.

Aren't Arch packages pretty much the same as Slackware packages, with the possible exception of the .PKGINFO file on Arch vs the SlackDesc file on Slackware? Maybe someone can verify this.

If they are the same (or nearly the same) and there's not an Arch-specific tool to do the conversion, then have a look at the deb2tgz script here (there may be others): http://code.google.com/p/deb2tgz/downloads/list

Note that the slackware .tgz extension just indicates that it's a slackware package - the archive itself is still a .tar.gz inside.

A Slackware package is just a binary tar archive ready for installation, as is (AFAIK) a Arch package. You may need to fiddle with the script or tune it a bit to suit your needs, like maybe to alter the finished package extension, or add a .PGKINFO file, but it's close already.

P.S. - note that both Slackware and apparently Arch are using/moving to the XZ compression, so a particular version of the script may or may not create packages with one or the other extension.

Best of luck,

I know little about Slackware package, but the Arch package is simple -- it's nothing but the binary files plus a .PKGINFO file.

Currently I just extract all the binary files in a .deb generated by checkinstall. And then I write a simple PKGBUILD and run makepkg to re-pack it into an Arch package. This works. But I don't want to do this manually every time I do an installation-from-source. And currently I don't quite care about the package information, which saves time but, is bad.

So I just wonder whether someone else has made such a tool to convert between different packages. That would save a lot of work, isn't it? Otherwise maybe I can write one myself.

welcome to the world of Arch

" the Arch Way"
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way