gcc install
 

I'm reading the installation instructions for the latest version of gcc and I'm not sure what some of it means.

"If you have previously built gcc in the same directory for a different target machine, do makedistclean to delete all files that might be invalid."

Is a target machine one on a network and wouldn't apply to my one computer?

"When configuring a native system, either cc or gcc must be in your path or you must set cc in your environment before running configure. Otherwise the configuration scripts may fail."

I have no idea what that means.

"To configure gcc:
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
srcdir /configure [options] [target]"

Is objdir a generic term and I'm supposed to name the new directory myself?

Same question for srcdir.

Thanks for helping this n00b.

Yes the target machine is the machine that you intend to install on.

Yes, that is a generic term, you can name it whatever you want.. maybe something like gcc-3.2 or something easy to remember.

This means that when your running the command to install software, you need to make sure gcc is in your user's path. A good place to install would be somewhere in the /usr directory. To find out what paths your user has, like root or any user, type $PATH at a command, it will print the path's it uses to look for programs or commands.