Plus when you install from source, even with that utility you still have to do a "configure" and set all the options you need, build the software, install etc. RPM's and DEB files are still much easier and the RPM database provides much more than querying and dependency capabilities. For instance you can easily verify the installed packages to make sure the files that are installed have not been tampered with using date/time, permissions, MD5 checksums, etc, just by doing an "rpm -V packagename".
I would still say RPM and DEB are preferred if possible but if you have to install from source then this utility is better than nothing.