CVS is a useful tool for managing source code, whether its writing code, or importing other people's code. "cvs import" was expressly designed to handle "tracking third-party sources".
SVN has something to offer here
svn propset svn:externals GemLibs libQuicktime http://svn.libquicktime.net/branches/stable
etc. then when the user updates , it grabs from the appropriate remote server.
pretty cool feature if you ask me, def better than manually importing
apt-get, fink, darwinports, etc. are better at managing libraries than CVS. But when such packages are not available, managing the source in CVS is far better option than telling people to download a tarball and compile.
And it comes down to this: what harm is there to importing the sources?
.hc
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