Hey, I currently compiled GAIM and it worked perfectly! However, when I was finished, i did an rm -rf gaim-0.64 or whatever the directory was in my /home/cecil (the user i'm currently on) directory, as I thought they were install files. It still worked when I went to /usr/local/bin, but it gave me some weird error when I tried to run it from my home directory: "mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding" and it will usually work anyway. It does abort on me sometimes though - guessing thats just distability on it's own.

My guess is that something was linked to the original directory I installed out of, and that's what caused all this? I'm a little confused so I wanted to double check.

Nah, as long as during the install you actually ran "make install" nothing should be symlinked to your install directory.

The mcop warning is most likely unrelated to the removal of that directory.

Cool

well, some progs may need their install directory, don't know about gaim.

Yeah? Do you have any examples? I've just never come across one, and would like to be prepared! Well, actually, I can think of one example, but the install directory becomes the "location" and there is no make install:
mysql



As for Gaim though, I have not found this to be the case.

Cool

wellll, I know amsn does it, the progs I use for my dynamic dns do it too.
There's always some progs that put their config and stuff in their installing directory.

Thank you for the help. This information is indispensable to me for future learning.

It's probably something weird I did..

not really, it should work toremove install dir most of time, but not always... I personnaly keep install dir, my HD is big enought (120GB!) and since I don't use package, it help me to remember what I have installed so far... and usefull if you mess with something and have to install it again.