I fully agree! Moreover, I tend to see "make install" not as actual installation command (that's indeed the task of a package manager), but more of an "extract

I fully agree! Moreover, I tend to see "make install" not as actual installation command (that's indeed the task of a package manager), but more of an "extract the relevant build results". With that in mind, I prefer packages that have a clear "build destination" folder which is filled (and updated) by a plain "make", so that "make install" isn't even needed anymore, because installation then boils down to a trivial "cp -R" command. This, of course, requires a disciplined separation of intermediate build results from the final build results. But that shouldn't be too hard. In fact, this may be simpler than writing down a good "make install" in the first place.