Packages for other distributions with `fpm`

Tectonic has a working PKGBUILD, which is great for us ArchLinux users, but there aren’t packages for any other Linux distributions. fpm is an excellent tool capable of translating simple packages between different formats, including from pacman (the kind built by the PKGBUILD) to deb and rpm (as well as OSX .pkg files).

The only pain points are that fpm is a Ruby tool, and that the Arch package must first be built with makepkg. This puts some limitations on the system responsible for building the packages, but might be worth solving, so that we can offer “official” distribution packages.

I’m inclined to think that Tectonic should be pretty easy to package so that maybe it’s not much more work to put together package specs for the relevant OS’s. Does fpm actually provide infrastructure for building packages for all of these OS’s, or does it just spit out things like RPM .spec files?

Also, in some cases it might be nicer to integrate with distro-specific … distribution … tools. For instance, it seems like user packages for Fedora are encouraged to go through their COPR system. Do you know anything about how well fpm plays with those tools?

Insights from other folks who have spent time on this topic are, of course, most welcome.

It doesn’t actually convert the spec to other spec formats, but the entire package. It can also turn directories or tarballs into complete packages, using command line options to fill in the rest of the information. This might be more appropriate for other distributions, or it might be easier to build the Arch package from the existing PKGBUILD (since the AUR only accepts PKGBUILDs, not complete packages) and convert that package to other formats.

I don’t know anything about other distro tooling (I’m strictly an Arch user, presently), but I get the impression that fpm-produced packages are reasonably standards-conformant.