What about a simple script, eg local-config which would take a package name as argument (or any generic description), read a config file given by the aforenamed package and create all necessary stuff in /usr/local/?
local-config tetex would create all /usr/local/ subdirs needed for tetex local-config ghostscript would create /usr/local/lib/ghostscript/ {commmon,5.50}, etc. -- Jean-Christophe Dubacq