Some projects only give you .tar.gz, what am I supposed to do with them? Is this what people call building from source? Am I supposed to move it to /opt and extract it in Debian based distros? Does this also work on Arch based ones?
Some projects only give you .tar.gz, what am I supposed to do with them? Is this what people call building from source? Am I supposed to move it to /opt and extract it in Debian based distros? Does this also work on Arch based ones?
It’s the source (code) of a package. To install it, you still need to create/download a distribution specific specs file (it’s called a PKGBUILD on Arch Linux for example).
This distribution specific specs file for an application (the PKGBUILD on Arch) is a text file describing where to find and download the source from (where on the internet this tar.gz is located). It also describes what the program’s dependencies (other programs it requires to run) are, (such as git to be able to download the sources, or gnutar to unpack them).
The package manager (pacman for Arch, apt for Debian) each can read and understand only a specs file written exclusively for that one package manager (distribution), read this specs file and installs the software.