Not in my back yard, on my workstation I have one.
This is *exactly* where Debian went wrong, this is Linux not Windows, respect the choice.
Dictating to system implementers tying their hands when they (Debian) have no idea what the system is going to be used for or how it is to be used.

-- snip --

I have deleted the rest of my response, the first section says all that needs to be said, going over old ground is non-productive use of my time.

@exponentialmatrix, that last commit made a significant improvement.
So much so I threw away everything I had done and have spun up a clean container to start afresh.

and ?
There is 'code' you are using that predates those 'words'.

TL;DR; For the curious that don't already know...

Some significant issues with installing non-official packages (packages not from Devuan repos) are:

package name collisions
package conflicting dependencies (e.g different version of the same library)
file name collisions provided by the package (handled by 'alternatives' for official packages)
conflicting configuration files provided by the package

These issues could potentially break the OS, and/or system packaging database making recovery extremely difficult.
Using the following hierarchy tree goes a long way to avoiding collisions between unknown packages/contents.
Unfortunately, too many packagers think they know better and do not comply with this standard.

/opt/acme/calculator/bin
/opt/acme/spreadsheet/bin
/opt/acme/spreadsheet/lib
/opt/ms-calculator/bin

If the system administrator chooses (entirely their choice)
symbolically linking in /opt/bin and trivially adding /opt/bin to $USER's $PATH

/opt/bin/calc -> /opt/ms-calculator/bin/calc

Wouldn't build a deb until I did.

Not in my back yard!
I will permit installations under ~user/ on the systems I manage, after I have made it abundantly clear that any issues will be resolved by 'rm -fr ~user'
Non-packages are built from source and installed under '/usr/local'.
Non-distro packages are also built from source and uploaded to the repository sever for installation by apt.

No I am maintaining it.

Yes, it's broken.

See above.

Not giving up yet, the peripheral source scripting is overly complex (any app should know where its own files are without relying on environment variables) but the actual meat looks good.

@exponentialmatrix, thanks for that, I will 'git pull' and start again when time permits.

Yes, after 20min of battling I figured out what I was 'supposed' to do.
Chicken->Egg->Chicken building is always fun

@rolfie
I bet paramtn didnt know that being a newbie to Linux

and I personally use the convention of 'sudo' (instead of '$') to make it obvious.
I use hash for in-between command comments (because that's what they are in bash).

do something...
# have a coffee
do something else
# now you are done

The devs have made it as simple and versatile as it needs to be.
Use a netinstall iso, unselect the default selected packages, complete the install and reboot, log in on the command line and 'apt install' only what you want.

@zaubberer23, Informative and useful post, I appreciate the detail and the time you must have spent drafting it.
NB. I use dkms nvidia-current/535.247.01 straight from the repo without issue and as a package it plays nice with the rest of Devuan. It's not the latest and greatest version, but it is years newer than my GPU which consequentially is fully supported.

Been bit by this before on an Intel (not mac) laptop, the kernel did not have the correct ACPI motherboard support.
Hit the MacBook forums...

As excalibur is not released and still in testing...
when it breaks you get to keep all the pieces

And that is the *only* source of packages you should install from if you don't want system wide breakage (whats wrong with vlc ?)

Ha, just tried it for fun and even that fails

nginx is still trying to compile OpenSSL (which looks like it requires 'cmake' not 'make' anyway).
Where did these come from, they look suspicious to me ?

Shoudn't the paths be

/home/drm/openssl-3.5.1/install/include
/home/drm/openssl-3.5.1/install/lib64

Your guide is

./configure --help

That error is caused by a missing system header file.
Ensure you have installed the package corresponding to your compiler version,

gcc -v 2>&1 | tail -1
gcc version 12.2.0 (Debian 12.2.0-14+deb12u1)

for me that is

apt install libgcc-12-dev