Eclipse installation

[Scott Litvinoff]

Hello,
I'm wanting to install the Eclipse SDK to my Ubuntu installation, but was
surprised to discover that section universe does not contain a package for
eclipse-sdk, though the Debian servers contain a packaging of it, at least
in the unstable stream under the contrib section.  Anyway, most of my
previous experience has been with RPM based distributions (mainly Red Hat),
as opposed to apt based distros, and so I'm wondering what you folks think
my best course of action is as far as installing Eclipse goes.  I could:
 
1. Download the Eclipse 3.01 binaries from eclipse.org and install them.
The disadvantage here is that now apt is unaware of the existence of this
"package", and so may feel free to overwrite / remove / whatever the
associated files at will.
 
2. Add the Debian packaging hierarchy to my sources.list file, and download
package eclipse-sdk using apt-get.  This seems to have multiple
disadvantages, e.g. the Debian package does not seem to be the newest
version of Eclipse, and the Ubuntu FAQ seems to indicate that mixing Debian
built and Ubuntu built packages might not produce the most desirable of
outcomes, but has the advantage that I will get "automatic" updates of
Eclipse.
 
3. Download the .deb files explicitly from the Debian servers and then use
dpkg to install them.  This mitigates the second disadvantage of option 2,
but not the first, and loses the advantage associated with that option.
 
So, that said, do you experts out there have any suggestion as to which way
I should go?  How I might follow option 1 but still keep apt in the loop
(with a minimum of extra fuss)?  Suggestions I go soak my head and leave
everyone alone?
 
Thanks for your help in advance.
 
- Scott
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