I don't get it. Is this a replacement for Alien? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28software%29)

If it's supposed to make packages for random unpacked software i'm kind of lost. It could be I just really suck at reading Ruby (don't know the language) but I couldn't find any code that looks at autoconf/automake files or standard open-source developer conventions to generate a package from scratch using the values intended by the developer. I've written two very crappy tools that do this to automatically generate packages (mainly for Solaris, RedHat and Slackware).

To answer the guy above's question: you need to learn how to make basic Makefiles and after that it's all package-manager-specific stuff, which you can use something like Alien (or fpm) to convert to whatever format you wish.

Here's a video from a BayLISA talk Jordan gave on fpm, which might help clarify things: http://vimeo.com/23940598

Also, see "Use Case - Package something that uses 'make install'" on the fpm wiki at https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki/PackageMakeInstall

Aw, that's disappointing. I automated those steps in my old package generator(s). After you build a couple thousand linux packages from scratch, you notice most of 'em follow some simple conventions which you can look for and package in an automated way.

http://psydev.syw4e.info/new/autopkg.pl/autopkg.pl-1.5/usr/b... (oh god, this is bad code)

http://psydev.syw4e.info/new/slacktools/slackmake

+1 for fpm. It makes building packages (rpm, yum, etc.) really easy. So you can deploy your own projects with all the benefits of a package manager. Jordan did a great job with this.