But in general I have often found great benefit in many cases in obtaining packages from source and compiling them, or downloading official binaries, even if the repository does have the latest version in theory.
(shameless plug incoming): My only obstacle with such "Manually Installed [and/or] Source-Compiled" (MISC) packages was checking for updates. So I made this: https://sr.ht/~tpapastylianou/misc-updater/
Works great, and I've been slowly improving it to add 'upgrader' commands for some of the packages too.
It's not a full replacement for a package manager, nor is it meant to be. But it's made my ability to use MISC packages instead of repository ones a lot more streamlined and easier.
But in general I have often found great benefit in many cases in obtaining packages from source and compiling them, or downloading official binaries, even if the repository does have the latest version in theory.
(shameless plug incoming): My only obstacle with such "Manually Installed [and/or] Source-Compiled" (MISC) packages was checking for updates. So I made this: https://sr.ht/~tpapastylianou/misc-updater/
Works great, and I've been slowly improving it to add 'upgrader' commands for some of the packages too.
It's not a full replacement for a package manager, nor is it meant to be. But it's made my ability to use MISC packages instead of repository ones a lot more streamlined and easier.