I'm not a total linux newbie, but this one stumps me everytime. Everytime I try to install a tarball, I unpack it (tar -xvjf ...) and everything goes ok. I cd in the directory it creates and run ./configure. Again everything goes ok, it dosen't error out or anything. So then I continue on to the make command. But everytime I try this it tells me "make: command not found." Why? What am I doing wrong? Do I need to cd into another directory before I run the make command?

I'm currently trying to install gettext because its required for glib which is needed by Ajunta so I can comple C++, on my Kubuntu system.

Install development packages for your distribution, which contains necessary utilities required for compiling any program.

hi,
Normal procesure to install package is
1)./configure
2)make
3)make install
but if you are getting error while doing make then this is because of (what i found on googling)

The error is caused when the system you are installing on does not have the program called "make". It is recommended that you install make as well as a C compiler ("cc" or "gcc") for the installation of Interchange.

I already have g++ installed. Is there another one I need?

Aren't these basic compilers needed just install linux anyway? How does apt-get install things if I can't? Dosen't it just automate the process?

Well there ya go, I didn't have the package "make" installed. That still leaves me wondering though why that isn't one of the "core" packages that should be installed on a linux system. Do the makers of Ubuntu just assume people don't install things using tarballs or what?

hi,
what is the output of rpm -qf /usr/bin/make on your system? also is /usr/bin in you PATH? show your echo $PATH output

I fixed the make problem, it works now. But here is the ouput you requested anyway.

After running echo $PATH

When I ran rpm -qf /usr/bin/make, it gave me this:

Hope that means more to you than it does to me

It means plenty. (K)Ubuntu is a debian-based distro, not an rpm-based one, so rpm commands will obviously not work.

As to why make wasn't installed automatically, yeah, they probably figure that if you are going to install tarballs, that you will have enough knowledge to make sure 'make' is there. After all, installing from tarball, for *most* deb- and rpm-based distros, is the "wrong" way to do things. (Okay, it's not "wrong", I do it myself. But usually the best choice is to use the distro's package manager (apt, rpm, etc.) to retrieve the distro-specific version of the app, as well as any necessary dependencies. )

You need compilers and other development tools to build packages from source. APT and most other package managers download and install pre-built binaries, hence you don't need the development tools. Gentoo's Portage system is one where development tools are needed, because it essentially gets the source and builds it for you (I don't know specifics of how it works, but I did use Gentoo once for a while ).

Yeah, i'm still trying to figure gentoo out, its through Gentoo that I had made the assumption all these compiliers and such we're needed to install linux with, because Gentoo needed them.