Anyone know of any "good" links for lerning abaout compiling? I have some programs I want to try to install but am having some difficulty with "./configure". I did a pretty skimpy installation and had to go back and install "gcc" and "make". When I added these files the dependent were installed also. So i'm wondering if I may need to install something else also. I've been getting error messages telling me that there is no available makefile when I can see it in the uncompressed file. Actually I see a makefile in many of the subfiles also.

Thanks for any input! It seems to me that this kind of is beyond the scope of the Linux+ exam since every book I've read tells you how to install RPM's or Debian packages, but doesn't really go in depth about compiling from source and the errors that can occour. I just need a good tutorial is all.

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First thing you should do is always read the README file. Almost all tarballs have one and the instructions may vary. You may need to specify a switch or uncomment an option in the source code. Most tarballs that come with 'configure' file were made using autoconf, but the others usually require you to execute 'make' followed by 'make install', but this varies. So check your README file for instructions. Also, when you compile something send all output and errors to a log file so that you can see them. STDOUT is 1 and STDERR is 2 so you can redirect them to files like:

./configure 1>outlog 2>errlog

and so can look at the error messages that you get later. They may be looking for a library file or something that is not instaleld on your system. There are ways around this, but you need to know WHY your make is failing and this will help. If you just need to compile one program you can do this via something like:

gcc -o myprog myprog.c

but usually the actual compiling commands are called by your makefile after searching for the correct tools and libraries. Try again and post again if you have probs.

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Thanks for the help VMS kid.

Darguy

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