Install RPM file on Arch Linux?

Jasonwryan (as per usual) was right on the mark with his initial comment.

Arch's packages are supposed to be as close to "vanilla" as possible. Now, while you could use rpmextract or alien, there isn't really a good reason to do so. What you should do is create a PKGBUILD that uses the RPM as the source file and then installs everything that's needed where it should be in the package() function. If you are unsure of how to do this, take a look at some packages on the ArchLinux User Repository; there are plenty that do similar things.

Now, since bsdtar (the default extractor used on source files by makepkg) supports extracting RPMs without issue, there is no reason to use rpmextract—it adds a makedependency without adding any real functionality.

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Some related reading from the wiki:

• PKGBUILDs
• Basic PKGBUILD templates
• Arch packaging standards

The Arch-specific tool is rpmextract. https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/any/rpmextract/

There's a tool called alien that can (attempt) to build a deb from the rpm. Sometimes it works; other times it makes a mess... it's an imperfect process at best. alien can be used to simply unpack the rpm into a deb format directory (i.e. do everything but build the deb) where you can manually install (copy) everything.

The other option is to install the rpm tools under arch and force installation of the rpm. This will get it installed, but not being a native rpm distro, it will have no knowledge of the deb packages on the system. Meeting the dependencies will, thus, be up to you. Also, any rc scripts it installs will have to be converted to systemd.