Specialized applications [SOLVED]

Question

I have been using Arch for last few weeks and have found it to be a great distro, all because of hard work of the developers here. However, when it comes to installing applications from specialized fields, there are always more applications available for other more popular distros, esp debian and ubuntu. For example, if I search of keyword 'dicom', there are far more results for ubuntu than for Arch:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywo … ection=all
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php? … _Search=Go
(There are no results in Arch binary package search).
How can I overcome this limitation?
On checking the forums and the wiki, makepkg with PKGBUILDs appear to be the main option. I had earlier used 'src2pkg' where I could download the source pkg and build it to a binary package with default options (simply giving the command 'src2pkg <pkgname.tar.gz>'), and it worked most of the time. src2pkg makes deb, rpm, tgz, pet and slitaz packages but not Arch packages. Is there a general PKGBUILD that I can use for compiling downloaded packages with makepkg command, without the need to write PKGBUILD everytime?
Thinking aloud, is it possible to point pacman or packer to ubuntu repository and to install packages from there? I don't think it is possible, though similar facility exists in some other distros.
Thanks for your help.
Last edited by rnarch (2012-05-27 02:20:13)

Answer 1

PKGBUILDS are very easy.  If the ./configure, make, make install commands would work, then it should take less than 5 minutes to make a PKGBUILD.  Essentially the PKGBUILD would be a script to run those commands, and by doing it through a PKGBUILD pacman will be able to track the package.  The only other effort of a PKGBUILD would be if a patch was needed to run on arch - but then you'd have to do this with the configure,make,make install route also.
Edit: perhaps a useful addition to the wiki (I have not found it yet - Just found it, see below) would be a step by step guide of going from source to PKGBUILD.  All the information is there, but I do remember when I started it wasn't clear what order things should be done in.  I now just barely know what I'm doing, but what works well for me is:
1) Create a temporary directory to work in.
2) Download the source into a 'src->packagename-packagever' directory.
3) cd to that subdirectory and try "./configure && make"
4a) if that works, go up to the top directory, get a template PKGBUILD, and edit appropriately
5a) run makepkg -g to put the checksum in the PKGBUILD
6a) run makepkg -i
7a) grab a beer, you're done.
4b) if 3 didn't work, then solve whatever problems arose - these steps would be exactly the same as when building from source in any other distro.  There is nothing ARCH specific here, just make sure the software will build properly.
5b) once configure and make work, go on to 4a.
Edit again: yes, I will look around the wiki again, and if I do not see something like this I'll add it to the appropriate page - either PKGBUILD or makepkg.  But I want to take some time to make sure it is done right rather than haphazardly editting the wiki.
I think a similar outline is already pretty well presented on the creating packages wiki so no need for anything new, unless it was to make the link to that article more prominent in the makepkg and PKGBUILD pages.
Last edited by Trilby (2012-05-25 21:37:31)