I want to use apt or pbuilder to build a package in user's home directory. The home directory has enough space to hold the package's source, its dependencies and binary output. But the apt and pbuilder documents say that you have to be a root user (sudo) to use it.

It's frustrating, as the only way now I have at my disposal is to build the package from source or use the dumba$$ (sorry for bad language) dpkg and in both cases figure out every dependency manually, create the dir layout manually and install the built things manually. Now if I can do all these things manually, why the tool writers (apt) think that doing so using their tool (apt) is somehow more special/dangerous?

I don't want to use root privileges JUST to build and test a user-land package.

If I am NOT allowed to do anything outside my home dir then why NOT the apt or pbuilder type commands be allowed to "build" something in my home dir without root privileges? I just want to use their functionality.

It seems there is nothing like Gentoo Prefix from Debian