I also think RPM gets a bad rap. Well constructed RPM's are an amazingly powerful binary packaging tool..
They're also quite handy for source packaging as well.
In five minutes, you can slap in a diff patch, edit a couple lines of the spec file and have a whole new release.
In no more than 20 minutes, I was able to package gcc2.95, gcc 3.3, gdb 5.3, binutils and prc-tools source trees together in a single RPM. Now....
rpmbuild --rebuild prc-tools-bundle.src.rpm
...gives me an instant set of packages for m68k/ARM PalmOS development that can be built under nearly any distro that supports RPM. Granted, the sucker is enormous.
A Powerful tool, indeed.