I've seen a lot of debate on these forums about how one should install software from source, but Googling has not helped me find much information about the pros and cons of available methods. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but it's buried under a mountain of "here's how you do it."
I know that there are problems with make install, I know that there are problems with checkinstall, and I know that there are problems with alien. But I've never seen anyone recommend a classic method of creating a deb package (e.g. dpkg -b) on these forums.
So I'm wondering what you use to install software when there's no DEB available. What are the pros and cons are of each method?
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