Sure, but you can always have "type this.. this does blah blah blah, then type this, 'blah' means ..". That way you don't only have an easy, hopefully working route outlined, but you also have something explaining what exactly you are doing and why.
Like most people would bother to check that the commands given actually do what the explanation says. No, I'm sorry, but a pointer to the documentation already on your own system is far better than a cheat sheet.
Of course, if you install the right debian package, the official debian docs are all installed for you. For some strange reason, this doesn't seem to be encouraged strongly enough.
/me digs out of hole
Not yet, you don't.
blechh... where's the metadata?
freshmeat or with pkg_* it's in (pkgsrc|ports)/<category>/<program>/Makefile
That's source, not metadata.
encap is quite handy, it allows multiple version of the same program to be installed at the same time. this is especially useful with things like pgp, stable/devel versions, and so on.
Of course, debian's virtual packages usually allow this too. If you really want two copies of incompatible software, you can make yourself an alternative setup and jump between the two, but it sometimes requires recompilation to change locations of config files, etc. Then again, you're compiling it all with your methods anyway...
MJR