sbotools

sbotools provides a ports-like interface to SlackBuilds.org. It consists of several commands, and a configuration file. It is written entirely in Perl and bundles a copy of the Sort::Versions module with itself for its own usage; this will not interfere with copies installed via the CPAN or SlackBuilds.org.

For Slackware 14.0, 14.1, or 14.2, you need the latest release in the 2.x branch, which is available here as a source tarball or as a ready-made package. It is also available on SlackBuilds.org's sbotools page.

The source code for the 1.x and 2.x branches is available on the downloads page.

For Slackware 13.37, you need the latest release in the 0.x branch, which is available as a combined slackbuild and source package here: sbotools-0.10.tar – md5sum: efb92fc318dabf9a0e4b43a9476e86c6

Beyond providing a ports-like interface, sbotools provides several additional features:

• For Slackware 14.0, 14.1, 14.2, and -current, handling of requirements from a slackbuild’s .info file, or for Slackware 13.37, parsing requirement lists from a slackbuild’s README, and asking the user if s/he wishes to install them. Note this is not at all automatic; user input and intelligence is required.
• The ability to compile 32-bit only slackbuilds on multilib x86_64 systems.
• The ability to create -compat32 packages from slackbuilds on multilib x86_64 systems.
• The ability to specify a number for the -j parameter to make, to speed up compiles by utilizing multiple cores.
• Probably a few others I’m not thinking of at present.

sbotools has been developed on Slackware64 14.2, 14.1, and 14.0. For any older versions, Perl would need to be upgraded, and the Lib.pm would need to be modified to support that version. Please submit any bugs you find to https://github.com/pink-mist/sbotools/issues. There’s also a #sbotools channel on freenode, come talk to us.

There is also some documentation available.
If you’d like to understand why I would do this, read the rationale.