Autopackage

Keep an eye on the development of Autopackage, which helps you install non-distro software on your particular distro. For example, if you're running Debian or Red Hat and someone posts a "generic" distribution version of their product, Autopackage is supposed to help track down/supply the necessary dependencies foryou. I haven't tried it yet, but will look into it.

From their website:

"If you've ever been frustrated by the fact that there was no package available for your distro, so you had to spend ages compiling the software you wanted from the source, or by 'rpm dependency hell' then autopackage is for you. However, being a completely new packaging system it requires the software creators to build autopackages for you. This is pretty easy, you need to show them the quickstart guide."