How to make Linux package manager recognize software installed from source?

Question

I don't even know if this is possible, but I'll ask anyway.

I'm building a Linux From Scratch system, and I'm pretty close to the end. Obviously, everything until now has been compiled and installed from source. So I decided to install dpkg for future package management. However, pretty much every .deb file I try to install has some dependency like libc, libstdc++ or coreutils. I know I have installed them before, but dpkg doesn't recognize them. Is there any way to make this work, or if there isn't, a possible alternative?

I've already asked in a LFS forum, but it's pretty inactive and I got no answer.

Answer 1

There are probably ways to hack around this, but it's not something I'd do. The point of a package management system is that it manages everything so that it all fits together.

Installing a bunch of dummy packages would make the dependency issue disappear, but unless you have all the dependencies in the exact location they're meant to be whatever you're installing won't work.

Answer 2

Both dpkg / apt and rpm are built with the assumption that they will manage all the software on the system (with the possible exception of a few special applications). There's no reasonable way to get around that; you can hack away until you get it to work, but then what's the point of even using them.

If you just want to install the contents of a .deb (or .rpm), you can just extract the files & install them (using ar and tar for .deb, rpm2cpio and cpio for rpm). If you want to use the full dependency system, then you need a full installation.