./configure and the "make" commands not working
 

Hey everyone,
I'm using Mandriva Linux 2006 (free edition) and thought I would download some extra applications for it.
I know how to install software from it but there is a problem, everytime I try to use the make command (doesn't matter if its make, make file, make install etc.) it comes up with "Cannot find file or directory" or "Permission Denied" or just an error. It has never worked.

Also when ./configure is run, sometimes it will work and sometimes I will get random errors as well.

What's going on??
Any help will be appreciated (sp?)
Thanks. Hellbreather.

Hi, welcome to linuxquestions.org.

What software are you trying to install? Most software you build from source requires that you have a working build environment i.e. tools like make, gcc etc. They may also depend on library containing code written by someone else. Not having one of these installed on your computer is a common cause of build failures.

If you are trying to install a particular software package and are having trouble I suggest you state which software package it is and post the error message you are seeing. This will help others to advise you on how to fix the problem.

Regards,
Jim

Okay a couple of questions then:

Is make pre-installed on Mandrivia or do I have to download it from somewhere?
And it's not one software package... it's any I try to install :scratch:

Can you post the output of your 'make' command? Also, please post output from 'which gcc'.

When I type "which gcc" I get this

/usr/bin/gcc

When I use the make command on the following software (kdevelop-0.3.3) i get this
make: *** no targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

When I use the make install command on the same software I get this:
make: *** no rule to make target 'install'. stop

and I get the same message above (except 'make') when I use make file.

these errors occur in every piece of software I install (or I'll get no file specified or something)

??? any ideas

If configure isn't completing successfully, no Makefile is generated, so that's why you'll get those errors (if this is wrong, someone correct me please!). It would help if you could give some specific errors from configure :).

In the case of Kdevelop the configure works fine. except it tells me the Flex needs to be installed.

When I try to install flex it says congure works fine then when I use make install, this error occurs
yacc -d ./parse.y
make: yacc: file not found
make: *** [parse.c] error 127

so what is going on here? and why wont make ever work???

It seems you're missing various packages, yacc being one. Also, you probably don't even need to build flex, as you should be able to get it (and other development packages) from Mandriva's CDs/package manager.

Basically, your build environment is missing bits and pieces. Use your software package manager to install yacc, flex, bison... etc.

I looked for it and it's not on there. So now i need to download Yacc. YAY! but can someone shed some light on why the ./configure works fine but the "make install" doesn't?

Right then I will be back, just going to install ALL the packages on my CD's and then I will get back to you, if you have suggestions in the mean time, please let me know

Thanks

Hellbreather

Right, installed all the packages and I still get the same errors, and I cannot find Yacc on my packages either...

Its not helpful to us to say that you get some errors. What are these errors, post them here so that people know exactly what ou are talking about and will be in a better position to then help you out. For yacc, you may need to install the byacc package.

If you are using Mandriva, it has a very good packaging system called urpmi which has thousands of packages. You can find out more about urpmi here and get the instructions for setting it up at easyurpmi. You need to setup the main, contrib, updates and plf repos. Once thats done, you can install additional packages using the command line or using rpmdrake(software gui).

He/she says he/she gets the same errors as before, see their earlier posts as they already posted said errors.

I've already got urpmi, it's also called rpmdrake.
I have also printed said errors above, so if you could have a look at that.
And where can I get byacc from? I will google it in the mean time.