$ lynx -dump 
http://julien.danjou.info/article-apt-build.html
apt-build
Optimize Debian packages for your system
Julien Reveret
<[1]shaddai@(...snip...)>
   Julien Danjou <acid@(...snip...)> (english translation)
Introduction
   Since the arrival of the very first versions of Gentoo, some people
   have announced that "Debian is good, but that's not optimized for
   [distribution in which you run make all the time]". And this is wrong,
   you are free to recompile software you use on Debian, using the apt
   system. Downloading a tarball, uncompressing it, running configure
   scripts and make install, is an easy task for every Linux user, but
   this is not adapted for the Debian package management system. [2]Stow
   was a way which worked without too much effort, but compiled programs
   were not really integrated in the apt dependancies. The ultimate
   solution is to use apt-build to recompile a software already packaged
   for Debian.
(...snip...)
-- 
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/51/