You might want to try checkinstall, which solves a lot of the problems of
uninstalling, etc:

https://wiki.debian.org/CheckInstall

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 4:17 PM, Matthew Crews <mailinglists@mattcrews.com>
wrote:

> Hey all, this is a relatively newbish question.
>
> I'm comfortable with downloading and installing the source code to a
> program that I want to use, compile it, and use "make install" to install.
> That is the easy part.
>
> Here's the hard part for me. What are the best practices for doing so?
> -Is there a specific subfolder I should be installing compiled programs
> to? IE /opt instead of /usr/bin ?
> -Is there a way to specify the subfolder?
> -Is there an easy way to uninstall said programs when I am ready to do so?
> -What is the best way to keep said programs up to date when a new version
> is available?
>
> For the record, I am using Debian Stretch. Would it be better to take a
> program I want and make a .deb so that I can use dpkg or apt?
>
> Cheers.
>
> ​Sent from ProtonMail, Swiss-based encrypted email.
> ​
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