LinuxDevCenter: Cooking with Linux, Part 1 Dec 15, 2004, 07 :00 UTC (4 Talkback[s]) (4402 reads) (Other stories by Carla Schroder)
"You need to know what files are installed on your system when you install a program from source code, so that you can find and remove all of them if you decide you don't want them anymore. Some program authors thoughtfully include a 'make uninstall' target to perform a clean uninstall, but many do not.
"You can use standard Linux utilities to generate a pre-installation list of all files on your system. Then generate a post-installation list, and diff the two lists to make a list of newly-installed files.