Due to an unfortunate incompatibility with the latest coreutils
that was not noticed until right before release, a working copy
of "checkinstall" was not available at the time of the Slackware
12.0 release.  Stuart Winter was kind enough to upgrade
slacktrack (a similar tool) to work around the issue of
installwatch not working, but in order to do that every file on
the system has to be "touched" so that changed timestamps can be
used to find files that are new.  Obviously, you will not want to
do that on a production system (but it is always best to have a
dedicated "build box" anyway).

A new and working checkinstall might also be availible by the
time you read this.  The project's homepage is:

http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall

Sorry for any inconvenience.