> Am I supposed to just download a tar.gz and do the configure/make/make install dance to /usr/local or /opt or something for each dependency that I need a more

> Am I supposed to just download a tar.gz and do the configure/make/make install dance to /usr/local or /opt or something for each dependency that I need a more current version of? No, you're (usually)supposed to stick with the out of date version rather than the shiny new version. Doing otherwise is taking on the responsibilities of a distro maintainer, usually not consciously. > Even worse - what if my deployment target is 3-4 years older than the machine I'm developing/compiling on? Either use the older version for developing or at least have a version of that environment for CI.