Also look at fpm: https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki
This sysadmin uses it frequently and it's a big time-saver for many software packages.
In Python Packaging: Hate, hate, hate everywherejordansissel
fpm
Ruby2011–2025
jordansissel / fpm
fpm
Effing package management! Build packages for multiple platforms (deb, rpm, etc) with great ease and sanity.
67Distinct people
80Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
11.5KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Effing package management! Build packages for multiple platforms (deb, rpm, etc) with great ease and sanity.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
Yeah, there's more than a whiff of entitlement to that phrasing. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend looking at fpm for packaging. Unless you're doing something weird or…
_lqaf used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year80 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-08-27 17:21:25 UTC to 2025-05-26 22:47:13 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 0 | 14 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
fpm
The goal of fpm is to make it easy and quick to build packages such as rpms,
debs, OSX packages, etc.
fpm, as a project, exists to help you build packages, therefore:
If fpm is not helping you make packages easily, then there is a bug in fpm.
If you are having a bad time with fpm, then there is a bug in fpm.
If the documentation is confusing, then this is a bug in fpm.
If there is a bug in fpm, then we can work together to fix it. If you wish to
report a bug/problem/whatever, I welcome you to do on the project issue tracker.
You can find out how to use fpm in the documentation.
You can learn how to install fpm on your platform in the installation guide.
Project Principles
Community: If a newbie has a bad time, it's a bug.
Engineering: Make it work, then make it right, then make it fast.
Capabilities: If it doesn't do a thing today, we can make it do it tomorrow.
Backstory
Sometimes packaging is done wrong (because you can't do it right for all
situations), but small tweaks can fix it.
And sometimes, there isn't a package available for the tool you need.
And sometimes if you ask "How do I get python 3.9 on RHEL 8?" some unhelpful
trolls will tell you to "Use another distro"
Further, job switches have me flipping between Ubuntu and CentOS. These use
two totally different package systems with completely different packaging
policies and support tools. Learning both was painful and confusing. I want to
save myself (and you) that pain in the future.
It should be easy to say "here's my install dir and here's some dependencies;
please make a package"
The Solution - FPM
I wanted a simple way to create packages without needing to memorize too much.
I wanted a tool to help me deliver software with minimal steps or training.
The goal of FPM is to be able to easily build platform-native packages.
With fpm, you can do many things, including:
Creating packages easily (deb, rpm, freebsd, etc)
Tweaking existing packages (removing files, changing metadata/dependencies)
Stripping pre/post/maintainer scripts from packages
Things that should work
Sources:
gem (even autodownloaded for you)
python modules (autodownload for you)
pear (also downloads for you)
directories
tar(.gz) archives
rpm
deb
node packages (npm)
pacman (ArchLinux) packages
Targets:
deb
rpm
solaris
freebsd
tar
directories
Mac OS X .pkg files (osxpkg)
pacman (ArchLinux) packages
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
6 sourcesHere'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
In How to Set Up Metric Collection Using Graphite and Statsd on Ubuntu 12.04 LTSUse fpm! https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm
In How to Set Up Metric Collection Using Graphite and Statsd on Ubuntu 12.04 LTSHow are FPM-generated debs any less integrated than native packages? You have the same control over the package metadata using its flags as you do with a Debian control file, and using `-s dir`, you have complete control over the package contents. You can ship rc/Upstart scripts, use pre/post-inst/rm scripts to add users and backup data, etc. These are all the same tasks that lots of Debian-maintained packages perform.
Please look at the FPM wiki, you'll see that it offers many more options for integration than checkinstall (which I used to use, and hated):
https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki
And why would you want to create source packages? One of the benefits to generating binary packages is that you compile once and roll it out to hundreds of servers. I'd rather not have to compile, say, Erlang on every target server.
In Python Application Deployment with Native PackagesHave a look at fpm: https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm
More details to come.
In Python Deployment Anti-PatternsI really appreciate the hard work you have done, like I said, it is something I want, and I haven't put in the effort to do it. I know how annoying it is to log JSON, I made a tornado app the logged JSON through the logging module, and it was really annoying that the logging Formatter pickled objects into strings.
I'm not sure what the issue is with MongoDB. But if you aren't aware there is the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) repository for RHEL and CentOS. It's a semi-official and safe repository run by the Fedora Project to add addition packages to EL. MongoDB is in there for EL5 (pretty old) and EL6. Also, easy_install is available for Red Hat and Debian in the 'python-setuptools' package.
I know it's common for people to install things form source on their own systems, but I feel that if you are doing something on someone e
Read the rest
lse's system you need to extra careful. And that means ask permission before installing, use package management, and if you can't use package management suggest ways to resolve the dependencies (easy_install, pip, gem) without actually doing it. See the Homebrew install script as a good example (https://gist.github.com/323731). Another thing is following convention. The way you are using /usr/local is how /opt is supposed to be used. If you use /usr/local the files should be in /usr/local/{bin,etc,lib}. If want to create a package directory and have things like 'bin/' in it, use something like /opt/amon/{bin,etc,sbin,var}. http://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_2.3/fhs-2.3.html
Jordan Sissel, who created logstash, also created fpm (Effing Package Management) (https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm). It makes it easy to package things. It might help avoid bash script hell.
Create an rpm from the files in /tmp/install:
fpm -s dir -t rpm --name amon --version 0.2.0 --depends mongodb --maintainer "Martin Rusev" -C /tmp/install etc/init.d/amon etc/init.d/amond opt/amon
Create a dep of tornado from pypi:
fpm -s python -t dep tornado