Easy "Add/Remove Porgrams" for non-sudoers with local PREFIX?

[Jason Crain]

Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> You'd have to have special packages for local and for system-wide.  
> ./configure is during compile, not during installation, so you'd have 
> to compile twice for each package to have one that goes in ~
>
> On Dec 20, 2007 11:24 AM, Carsten Agger <agger at c.dk 
> <mailto:agger at c.dk>> wrote:
>
>     Like in many packages, you can say
>
>     ./configure PREFIX=~/bin
>
>     you'll install the package locally and don't need to be superuser. Are
>     there any plans to integrate this functionality with
>     synaptic/Add-Remove
>     for non-sudoers, or am I missing something?
>     <https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss>
>

The problem seems to be that programs will look for their files in /etc 
and /usr/share.  You could do something similar to what fakeroot does.  
Load a library that wraps open and stat system calls.  You could then 
check for files in ~/.user_root before looking in the real root.  Then 
programs wouldn't have to be recompiled.  Though, it would take a 
miracle to keep this from breaking some programs...