You might prefer to install Jardeps in a location that requires fewer privileges than /usr/local, say, ~/.local. One way to do this would be to override the installation-directory setting when installing:

make PREFIX=$$HOME/.local install

When building your own programs, you'd have to then tell Make where jardeps.mk is:

make -I$$HOME/.local/include

A more permanent solution might be to set MAKEFLAGS in your shell's environment:

# In ~/.bash_aliases?
export MAKEFLAGS=(-I"$$HOME/.local/include")

If you're doing that, you may as well put a jardeps-env.mk in there to set PREFIX for you when you build Jardeps. I prefer to keep such configuration in ~/.local/etc, so I set MAKEFLAGS to:

# In ~/.bash_aliases
export MAKEFLAGS=(-I"$$HOME/.local/etc" -I"$$HOME/.local/include")

Then I define PREFIX in ~/.local/etc/jardeps-env.mk:

# In ~/.local/etc/jardeps-env.mk

PREFIX=$$(HOME)/.local

Now my update procedure is:

cd jardeps
svn update
make
make install