packaging a self compiled program in a .deb file

[Micha Feigin <michf@post.tau.ac.il>]

I want to package a program I compiled in a .deb to enable uninstalling
it cleanly later.
It seems that alien can convert slackware tgz packages to debs (I tried
the other way around and it doesn't seem like there is any extra data
except for the program) and I thought that this could be used to do
that (I am just looking for unistall ability and to know whats
installed, nothing else).
To create this I need to install into some local directory instead of
root so that I can create the tar file.
Any idea how to do that (maybe chroot could do that but then I loose
access to the local executables).