Tell Debian I have installed App by building from source, How to?

[Anand Hariharan]

I have fetched, tweaked and built source of a particular app in my Debian box. It installs itself in /usr/local, but I can get it to install elsewhere. My question is, how do I tell dpkg that I have done so? In terms of dependencies or requirements, how do downstream and upstream apps know that I have installed a particular version of the app?

thank you for any insights,
- Anand

[Pat Farrell]

I think you can't. At least not without building a proper package and have dpkg install it, so that the dependancies and state are properly stored.

[Tim Holloway]

I'm afraid most of my expertise is in RPMs, which are Red Hat, not Debian/Ubuntu dpkgs. But I think there's an "alternate installation" parameter on dpkg to indicate that a different install root than "/" has been selected. You'd probably have to adjust your PATH, however.

[Anand Hariharan]

Thank you, Tim. Your response gave me something to Google for (viz., "dpkg alternate installation"), and while I haven't gotten answers yet, I have something to read and find out:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html
http://linux.die.net/man/5/apt_preferences


sincerely,
- Anand