Outside of a development environment, you'd run that ./configure && make install step on a build slave that creates a nice RPM or Debian package of it for you which you can install without fear that the build scripts install backdoors, download obsolete software or wipe the filesystem.
With a good build system (eg. autotools) writing an RPM spec takes almost no time at all and if you have the proper infrastructure in place for building packages, you can have something workable in a very short time.
Self-packaged RPMs also don't need to be quite as high-quality as ones you might want to include in a distribution, so if it makes sense for your use case, it's perfectly okay have "bloat" (eg. an entire python virtualenv) in your package.
With a good build system (eg. autotools) writing an RPM spec takes almost no time at all and if you have the proper infrastructure in place for building packages, you can have something workable in a very short time.
Self-packaged RPMs also don't need to be quite as high-quality as ones you might want to include in a distribution, so if it makes sense for your use case, it's perfectly okay have "bloat" (eg. an entire python virtualenv) in your package.