Linux Packaging Debate

Have you tried building rpm/deb packages?

Normally it's not your job to package it yourself the distro maintainers do that

Why would anyone use this instead of distro packages?

Why can't this be done using standard ways, like deb packages?

Creating packages for various distros is not your job as a software developer, and it never was intended to be your job in the first place. At least part of this stance is based on a misunderstanding of how Linux package manager style software distribution works.You most likely don't have experience creating and maintaining packages for every distro that exists, expecting you to be able to do this would be silly. Typically the users or developers of the countless different distros will b

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean? It's a bit difficult to install build artifacts directly into the system. There are problems like tracking version compatibility, installing resource files and tracking artifacts for removal etc. This is what packages and package managers do. If you wish to take that route, then Arch PKGBUILDs and Gentoo Ebuilds are reasonably easy. Ebuilds have a lot of similarity with ports. Debian's checkinstall is also somewhat successful in it. Nix and Gui

Github is not a substitute for a packaging system.

If its open source then packagers will do the job for me

I'm with you! If you're serious about your software (read: you want users)... either make a Flatpak manifest, package spec, or something equivalent.Point is, somebody made something better than this little install shell script. I'll accept pip, I'm not picky.There is almost surely no reason for $thing to be writing to my system directories. Nobody should be coaching this, it can go wrong in every way.Binaries and libraries can come from my home d

As a big debian fan who runs it on everything... apt works great, yeah, but packaging itself is a nightmare. Try to source patch one of your packages and rebuild it, and maybe distribute it internally. It’s a mess. Haven’t used Arch but e.g. APKBUILDS are heaven in comparison.