The AUR PKGBUILD shows a pretty simple recipe:

build() {
  arch-meson "${pkgname}-${pkgver//+/-}" build
  meson compile -C build
}

package() {
  meson install -C build --destdir "${pkgdir}"
  # permission fix
  chmod 755 "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/ascii-draw"
}

I’ve been seeing arch-meson often used, but haven’t explored what it does. Some day…

Though it’s way more fun to use text specification, like the one referenced by @fratermus@lemmy.sdf.org

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want the ASCII-Draw flatpak, but that’s not the only way to get it:

• there’s a Snap
• it can be installed from source
• there’s also an AUR package

But maybe you’re not on Arch, don’t like Snaps (can’t blame anyone for that) and don’t want to install from source (same)? What type of package are you looking for? Only native package? For which distro?

You might be interested in Emacs, it has (among many other things) artist-mode where you can draw with your cursor and obtain good ASCII art

I don’t have an answer for you, I’d never heard of ASCIIFlow, but holy shit that takes me back to an oooold piece of DOS software called FormTool. Used to make dungeon maps and character sheets and such with it back in the early 90s. Good times.

Any reason for avoiding flatpak?

If flatpak is not an option, then you need to specify what packaging platforms are applicable.

cant you compile it also im sure also in the AUR if ur on a arch based distro

This sent me down a rabbit hole since it’s something I’ve half-considering for a while. I prefer text configuration rather than GUI so I ended up installing graph-easy on my debian laptop:

sudo apt install libgraph-easy-perl

and made a first attempt to diagram the power setup in my campervan

It’s a perl module but the graph-easy wrapper makes it behave like any other CLI tool. cat or echo the config text to the wrapper and the graph pops out on STDOUT