[_delirium]

> On RHEL or Ubuntu, you typically have to install the developer tools, hunt down the source RPMs/DEBs...

Nitpick, but on Debian/Ubuntu this is a lot more simple than you make it sound:

    apt-get source xxx     # download the source package for 'xxx'
    apt-get build-dep xxx  # install everything needed to build it

[xenophonf]

I didn't know about that! Thanks! I'd be surprised if yum didn't support something similar, but whenever I've had to build custom RPMs, it's been the old manual srpm download way. That said, on top of my to-do list is getting Spacewalk up and running, so that I can maintain my own package repository for RHEL/CentOS/Amazon Linux similar to what I do with Poudriere for FreeBSD.