Haven't used ubuntu/debian for years now... There used to be a "checkinstall" tool, so you'd ./configure, make, and instead of "make install" use "checkinstall

Haven't used ubuntu/debian for years now... There used to be a "checkinstall" tool, so you'd ./configure, make, and instead of "make install" use "checkinstall" - this would make some fakeroot magic, install the package and create a deb package for it, that could be apt-get removed later. And iirc, automake uses /usr/local by default (if you didn't specify the --prefix).