>but, I've personally found that nothing destabilizes my system like adding a bunch of software from outside the package manager
That's why you should be creating your own PKGBUILD.
That's why you should be creating your own PKGBUILD.
My initial comment was about needing to do that on non-arch systems. I've created my own RPM and DEB packages in the past as well; but, at least when I did it years ago, it wasn't as effective as a PKGBUILD on arch.