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Submitted by Sachin on Mon, 07/01/2013 - 16:05

Compiling software from source code

Introduction

This document describes the way to compile most software under Trisquel GNU/Linux.

To get the most common tools for compiling, you may want to install the meta-package build-essential. It contains the GNU compiler collection, GNU debugger, and other development libraries you may need for compiling. To do this, run: 

 sudo apt-get install build-essential
The most common method is the set of commands
./configure
make
make install

Using configure and make

  • Go to the folder where the software source code is using terminal
    cd /path/to/your/software
  • then
    ./configure
  • or
    ./configure --prefix=/opt/software-name

This variation makes it easier to remove the software just by deleting the folder "/opt/software-name".

  • If there are errors then you need to download required packages from repositories mostly they are like "packagename-dev" then repeat step 2. If you get no errors you could run
    make

This will compile the source code.

  • You may now run
    sudo su

This will make you the root user and you'll still be in the same directory.

  • The last step is
    make install

Further Reading

This standardized way to build software is made possible by the GNU build system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_build_system

Revisions

07/01/2013 - 16:05
Sachin
Sachin
07/12/2013 - 20:10
lembas
lembas
08/13/2013 - 17:55
lloydsmart
lloydsmart
08/10/2024 - 20:42
knife
knife