manual compilation and package management

[Imre Tuske]

Hi,


I hope the following will make sense :) I'd like to compile KDE on my
Ubuntu system using Konstruct -- but what's important that at the end
it would be installed "by hand" as opposed to the regular installation
procedure, using packages.

Now what I'm thinking about is the following: package list is actually
a representation of what's installed on the system, which libraries
and all that stuff. Now if I "hand-install" KDE, it won't show up in
the package list.

What I'm wondering about if there's a way to build a "placeholder"
package of some kind, which would add the necessary information to the
package database, which could be read by other packages on install. (I
could imagine this "placeholder" to be containing information about
what files were installed and where.)

(An example: let's say I'm lazy and want to compile only KDE base, and
install some of the KDE toys from package instead of compiling them
all. Then the toys would not see the kdebase packages installed and
would complain about that.)

Maybe it's a stupid question, but I don't know much but the basics
about package management, and just thinking of a way of installing
"hand-compiled" stuff in a way that works together with packages.


imre