[e12e]

Just a quick note for those following along at home, I recommend having a look at xstow for managing custom package(trees). Basically it's:

    mkdir ~/opt/xstow
    cd /tmp
    # get package (verify signature)
    cd package
    ./cofigure --prefix=$HOME/opt
    make
    make install prefix=$HOME/opt/xstow/package-version
    cd ~/opt/xstow
    xstow package-version # xstow -D to "uninstall"

I find that helps a lot when you need to install new versions, and don't want to worry about cruft left over -- and also simplifies handling of PATH, MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_RUN_PATH.

Some packages are a little harder, but can sometimes be tricked to behave by moving ~/opt/xstow out of the way, doing a make install and then moving ~/opt to ~/opt/xstow/package-version-etc and xstow'ing.

[e12e]

That's: http://xstow.sourceforge.net/