source management within APT

[Christian Schoenebeck <schoenebeck@software-engineering.org>]

Hi!

I'm thinking about extending APT to explicitly manage source packages 
automatically. Because I need to compile certain packages from source, either 
due to the need of certain compile time options, optimizations or to apply my 
own patches. I really would like this to be handled automatically by APT, 
e.g. each time when doing 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade'.

My idea was to allow to explicitly define a list of packages in a APT config 
file which should be compiled from source. That way all other packages (that 
is the majority) are simply installed as always - using a binary package. But 
for those explicity listed packages, APT will compile them from source and 
install them afterwards automatically. Further more, for every package there 
should be a way in a APT config file to define compile time options and 
pathes to patches we should be applied (for own, custom patches).

Are there already efforts in that direction? Chances to be accepted for the 
official APT if I work on this or are you strictly against such an approach? 
If the latter is 'yes', please tell me why. And don't point me to Gentoo!

CU
Christian