(Preliminary) Research

(This is just a growing list of cross-distro packaging systems / formats / initiatives. Meant to look for viable alternatives before venturing off with inst.)

• appstream and freedesktop AppStream - Utilities to generate, maintain and access the AppStream Xapian database. AppStream itself shares user contributed content/ratings/etc. for GUI installers.

• AppData is the subset of AppStream that distro application stores/managers utilize to augment package data (for screenshots mainly), and which makes sense for xpm to support as implicit post-processing --filter

• distromatch - universal package names across distributions

• PRM - a APT and YUM repo maker in Ruby.

• ArchWiki:Pacman_Rosetta - pacman/yum/apt-get/zypper/emerge comparison

• PackageKit provides a DBUS package update management API and command-line tools (pkgcon).

Listaller

• http://listaller.tenstral.net/
• custom package management system, relocatable apps, binding API, development tools

Zero Install

• https://0install.de/
• based on raw ZIP/TARs, with XML meta description format; virtual installs into a per-application cache directory
• works on Linux and Windows, C#-based
• https://0install.de/about/product-comparison/?lang=en

PortableLinuxapps

• http://portablelinuxapps.org/
• Repository and packaging format
• based on AppImageKit for self-contained semi-static bundles https://github.com/probonopd/appimagekit

Limba

• https://github.com/ximion/limba, http://freshcode.club/projects/limba
• → State: planning. Possible successor to Listaller.
• Utilizes virtual filesystems (overlayfs) to allow cross-distro installation of unmodified binaries alongside distro applications (in /opt/bundles).

SPM/Smart Package Manager

• https://labix.org/smart
• cross-distro management toolset/GUI, utilizing dpkg/rpm atop yum/apt/urpmi, can't install packages on incompatible distros though.

OpenPKG

• http://www.openpkg.org/
• RPM-based toolset and public repo
• → State: active

Nix

• https://nixos.org/nix/
• "Functional package manager"

Glick2

• https://people.gnome.org/~alexl/glick2/
• AppImage/container format for binary package installations alongside distro.

CDE (CDEpack)

• http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html
• is a container format, which wraps up application "Code, Data and Environemnt settings" for deployment across different distros.
• Provides a lightweight virtualization runtime tool cde and a plain zip package format (containing absolute virtual paths and all (straced?) dependencies). Neat. (Not sure if that's wrappable as fpm target though.)

Ubuntu Click

• http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ubuntu-s-Click-Packages-Might-End-the-Linux-Packaging-Nightmare-464271.shtml
• → State: vapourware (at this point only exist for Ubuntu mobile)
• Likely will only target Ubuntu as "base framework" and just embed-package additional dependencies.

EPM (Easy Package Maker)

• https://www.msweet.org/projects.php?Z2
• → State: no new development, still functional
• Similar to fpm, but requires spec-files. Quite a few packaging targets, and provides a custom X11 installer and raw packaging format.

SuperDebs / RUNZ Framework

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_OS
• → State: defunct
• Multiple .deb packages (bin, data, libraries, dependencies bundled) in a TARball with shell prefix. Used a clever APT-source approach for installation and updates.

MojoSetup

• http://icculus.org/mojosetup/
• Lua-based scripting installer?
• → historic/defunct

klik

• http://klik.atekon.de/indexold.php
• → superseded by http://portablelinuxapps.org/

AutoPackage

• → status: obsolete, merged with: Listaller
• http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://autopackage.org/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20050528002138/http://autopackage.org/faq.html
• http://web.archive.org/web/20080331092730/http://www.linux.com/articles/60124

Chakra Bundles

• http://web.archive.org/web/20130401072422/http://www.chakra-project.org/bundles.html, http://chakra.sourceforge.net/bundles.html, website http://chakra-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Bundles down, State: unclear
• Click and run apps; container?

Linspire CNR

• → (defunct)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNR_(software)

PC-BSD/FreeBSD PBI packages

• http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Create_PBIs
• → Are no longer a useful target. Initially considered it for BSD/Linux cross-packages.
• They formerly (PBI-9) used a binary+tar bundle, but PBI-10 / PBI_Manager is now just a GUI frontend to the BSDs internal ports system. (Confirmed by dlavigne via IRC #pcbsd.)

GoboLinux

• http://www.gobolinux.org/
• Utilizes a custom filesystem structure to allow compartmentalized applications.

Bedrock Linux

• http://bedrocklinux.org/introduction.html
• Provides built-in virtualization, allows to run applications with dependencies from different distros. In fact it basically turns distros into interchangeable client runtimes.

Attribution

Thanks also to /u/gondur for a couple of references, and ximion of course.