Suppose I download the source.tar. What is the recommended way to install from the source code and yet manageable by the aptitude package system?

One method I read of is to install (.configure, make, checkinstall) with the help of checkinstall package and then manually install the deb package created with dpkg.

Is there a better method?

Thanks !

I think that what you really want is Gentoo. The entire distribution is source. Every file in the system is compiled on your computer. I just got Gentoo 2006.0 installed on a computer. It was a bit tricky. They have just started using a live/install cd. The installer didn't work so I had to use their old method of installing, as described for the 2005.x releases. I think that if you want a source distribution you may find Gentoo to be satisfying. Plus their package management utility, emerge, is a thousand times better than Debian's APT family of package management utiltities.

www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

The only way to get something like apt to see packages is for them to be packages to start with. Some source files contain a .spec file which can be used to build rpms from source. Another way is to use a generic .spec file to build the rpm from. If the rpm outhere has dependienc issues one can get the src.rpm if one exist and build your own rpm from that so it matches your current package version levels unless the src.rpm has minimum version levels in it.

Brian1

I think the method you described, using checkinstall is pretty close to state-of-the-art. aptitude has some awareness of packages installed locally even without the package manager. At least it can give you a list of them, but I'm sure it desn't keep track of all their libraries, etc.

Package managers are almost a necessity for a well administrated system, which, I'm sure, is the reason Gentoo or any distribution which wishes to be taken seriously, uses one.

Ha ha ha!

What you want is the debian source.
apt-get source <pakage name>
Modify the source to your hearts content
run dpkg-buildpackage
Then install the resulting deb(s).

Some source packages have both RPM and DEB targets for making a package which you can install the normal way. One example is ndiswrapper.

However installing the resulting deb with 'dpkg -i' does not automatically resolve dependencies issue (ie. by downloading the required dependencies from the Internet). Also, any dependencies you installed manually would not be recognized by aptitude. ie. When you uninstall the package, aptitude would not automatically uninstalled its dependencies too.

A potential package that might solve the dependency issue with dpkg is gdebi. However, I'm not sure if gdebi will marked those downloaded dependencies as 'automatically installed'(so that they can also be automatically uninstalled when the parent package is uninstalled). If anyone can elaborate on this software, it would be great!