source installation not working correctly in Mandriva 2010.0 pp
 

So I just installed Mandriva and was trying to install alien so I don't have to deal with source anymore. This happened, tried other sources and the same error. Maybe I'm overlooking something simple, but this is killing me.

so, First I wget (url for alien). It finishes.

Then, I start the installation

that takes me to where it should. then
which gives me a result of

Am I doing something wrong with this? Why is the ./configure not recognized?

That result means that "configure" does not exist in that directory.

I would have thought that alien would be available using your package manager (always check there first)

After extracting and going into the alien directory, what do you find? e.g., is there a MAKEFILE? ....a README? ...maybe an install script?

alien seems to only be in deb and source, not rpm.

ls shows me:
not sure why there's a debian subdir in there, but thats the total output of ls

So reading "README" and "INSTALL" seems like a good place to start......

I see a Makefile*, so you are probably going to rename this to "Makefile" and then run "make". But first, read the instructions......

Post # 4 : Sorry, that's wrong , it is a perl application !


Install alien : 1) perl Makefile.PL

2) make 3) su 4) make install

..

that perl thing was exactly what it took, thanks.
But, I can't find where its actually putting the RPMs I make. They aren't in the tarball's directory.

And, would alien -r -i -c tarball.tar.gz be the correct line to create an RPM and automatically install it? just making sure

Alien will create a package to the current directory.

"alien_8.1.1" is an ancient version. Latest is 8.81.
http://joey.kitenet.net/code/alien/

But why in the first place use it at all ?
Mandriva has the most. Release 2010: 7,344 packages:
http://ftp.linux.org.tr/mandrake/
contrib 'release' : 11,869 packages : ( 2010.1 )
http://ftp.linux.org.tr/mandriva/cur...media/contrib/

Much better to create an rpm with rpmbuild,
if you find a non rpm package.
Fedora packages may be used too sometimes.
Fedora 13 : 17,000 packages.

And I can think of no reason to install alien packages
automatically. You will always have to watch carefully,
what happens for each package : Dependencies.
..

thats what I have, just made a typo.

Mainly because there's a few apps I wanted to install that aren't available in the repos


well, when I install an RPM file that I've got by just clicking it, it lets me know if I need additional dependencies. I was assuming the autoinstall option would do the same.