i'm new to mac os x but i've been using linux/unix for a while. on unix systems i administer, i use a program called encap/epkg. when i install a new program, with the configure script, i would run something like ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/encap/foo-1.0/. most relocatable packages support this. then i run epkg which makes symlinks from /usr/local/encap/foo's bin/, man/, sbin/, etc to /usr/local's bin/, man/, sbin/, etc. the nice thing about doing things this way is if i need to upgrade or delete a program, i can delete /usr/local/encap/foo then tell epkg to update itself -- it'll delete the dangling symlinks effectively cleaning out the package without leaving anything behind. without it, you wouldn't know what files belonged to what packages.
i am interested in being able to be able to do the same thing with the packages available on forked.net.
maybe there's already a way to do this and i've entirely overlooked it.
thanks.