I would like to install most packages in /usr/local. But I don't see options to apt-get or dpkg which allow me to specify the destination directory. Is it possible?

I get a number of packages installed and then want to move to a new version of Knoppix or something else and / gets destroyed and replaced. Then I have to do the package installation all over again.

Building from source doesn't seem like a good workaround. If I do a build using APT can I set the install directory?