For the most part it's like building software from source the old-school way, roughly:

configure --prefix=/usr/local
make

make DESTDIR=/tmp/package install-strip
# or is it
DESTDIR=/tmp/package make install-strip

# jiggle things around so the files are clean and sane:
chmod as needed to remove setgid bit
make separate dirs as needed, if your software should be split into multiple components (eg. executable + library/headers)
mksquashfs /tmp/package package.tcz -all-root -noappend

Some software is more tedious because they're made for other build systems. So you need to install that first before you can build.

Worked example with Jose

I'm not sure why I have two install phases shown in my old notes...

tc@primer:~/jose/build$ sudo meson install --no-rebuild
Installing lib/libjose.so.0.0.0 to /usr/local/lib
Installing cmd/jose to /usr/local/bin
Installing /home/tc/jose/build/jose/jose.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/cfg.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/io.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/b64.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/jwk.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/jws.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/jwe.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/jose/openssl.h to /usr/local/include/jose
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-alg.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-fmt.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-b64-dec.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-b64-enc.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwe-dec.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwe-enc.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwe-fmt.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwk-exc.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwk-gen.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwk-pub.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwk-thp.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jwk-use.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jws-fmt.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jws-sig.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/ronn/jose-jws-ver.1 to /usr/local/share/man/man1
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_b64.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_jwk.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_jws.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_cfg.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_jwe.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_io_t.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/doc/doxygen/man/man3/jose_io.3 to /usr/local/share/man/man3
Installing /home/tc/jose/build/meson-private/jose.pc to /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

DESTDIR=/home/tc/BUILDROOT/jose ninja install

Now some sanitisation of the outputs:

# current working directory is probably ~/BUILDROOT/jose/
rm -rf usr/local/share/
chmod -R g-s ~/BUILDROOT/jose/

find . | xargs file | grep "executable" | grep ELF | grep "not stripped" | cut -f1 -d':' | xargs strip --strip-unneeded
find . | xargs file | grep "shared object" | grep ELF | grep "not stripped" | cut -f1 -d':' | xargs strip -g 

# Now check that usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/jose.pc looks vanilla and sane.

Make the archive and checksum:

mksquashfs jose jose.tcz
md5sum jose.tcz > jose.tcz.md5.txt

Generate the file listing, you might need to select the subtree manually like in this case where I only captured usr/:

cd jose/
find usr -not -type d > jose.tcz.list

libjansson is a dependency for jose that we built earlier, so make note of that

echo jansson.tcz > jose.tcz.dep

Write a .info file that describes the package, crib from existing files where possible.

Wrangle the deps some more so that it can get jose => jansson => libcrypto from jansson-dev.

Another example with more scripting and automation

Ideally we'd like to set a couple variables and then run a fixed set of commands that don't require much thinking. This is pretty close to that.

NAME=http-parser

mkdir -p /home/tc/BUILDROOT/$NAME

DESTDIR=/home/tc/BUILDROOT/$NAME make install-strip

cd ~/BUILDROOT/
chmod -R g-s $NAME
find $NAME/usr/local/include -type f -execdir chmod -x {} \;
mksquashfs $NAME $NAME.tcz
md5sum $NAME.tcz > $NAME.tcz.md5.txt

Then the other steps as mentioned above.