How do the Arch Linux developers create all of those binary packages that I install using pacman?
Arch Linux packages are created by first writing a PKGBUILD file. A PKGBUILD file is a Bash script that contains: • The name of the package, the version number, and lots of other information. • Instructions for downloading, compiling, and installing the software package. The newly written PKGBUILD file is then used by the makepkg program which uses the instructions contained within it to create a pacman-installable, binary package with the extenstion ‘.pkg.tar.xz’.
