Install Flirc software on Fedora (and other RPM based distros?)

The Flirc Media Center Companion is a neat little USB device that lets you use any IR remote control with your Raspberry Pi or Android stick. The software you need to set it up is available for Linux but they only maintain the Debian package. There’s an old RPM available but I had problems installing it.

Here’s what I did to create a working (and current) RPM version:

1. Download the latest DEB file that matches your architecture here: http://apt.flirc.tv/arch. For example, for 64 bit at this time that’s http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x86_64/binary/flirc_1.3.6-1_amd64.deb.
2. Convert it to an RPM with alien: sudo alien -r flirc_1.3.6-1_amd64.deb
3. Remove the unnecessary and conflicting entries: rpmrebuild -p –change-spec-files=”grep -i flirc” flirc-1.3.6-2.x86_64.rpm

That command will create a new RPM that should install cleanly and it all seems to work fine for me. I’m on Fedora 21 64-bit.