installpkg
 

i've always installed stuff manually from source, but i really want to get comfortable with pkgtool since it makes it easy to keep track of everything. so i downloaded aterm-0.4.2.tar.gz, moved it to /usr/local/src, and changed the name to .tgz.

then i ran installpkg aterm-0.4.2.tgz, and after some clicking and humming, it dumped me back out to command line. no errors, and aterm now appears in pkgtool when i go to view packages installed, so i figure it worked. only i can't run it. i notice that nothing happened in /usr/local/src, so i updatedb and slocate aterm. turns out it's untarred in /aterm-0.4.2, which is a little annoying, but nothing too terrible. (can i choose a destination directory?) i cd to that directory, and try

aterm

command not found. i make sure i'm root, and do slocate aterm again to see if i can find it myself, but nothing. where is the command? did it install or not? i've gone to slackware.org, i've read through all of shilo's guides, and searched everywhere. seems like most people just run installpkg <name> and that's it.

so 2.5 questions:

did it install correctly? and if so, how do i run it?
in the future, how can i choose where installpkg puts things? i'd like most stuff to go in /usr/local.

Renaming a source tarball (tar.gz) to .tgz is NOT creating a Slackware package.

The way to do that is :
- untar the source to some dir
- change directory to that some dir
- configure the source with options you want
- build it using make
- use for example checkinstall to finish the installation and create a Slackware package. This replaces the make install command.

Checkinstall is in the extra dir on your Slackware CD's or FTP.

ok, thanks for responding so quickly. i found checkinstall on the slackware cd, and installed it using pkgtool. so then i cd'd to /aterm-0.4.2 and ran ./configure and make. no errors, everything looked good. ran checkinstall aterm.lsm (hit tab and this is what it gave me). it then said that the package documentation directory did not exist, would i like to create a default set, and i said yes.

Preparing pacakge documentation...OK

Installing with "aterm.lsm"...

========== Installation Results =======================

Copying documentation directory...
/var/tmp/bLiXVLWaHcdUmdRBbVRU/installscript.sh: line 16: aterm.lsm: command not found

**** Installation failed. Aborting package creation.

Cleaning up...OK

Bye.



??? i'm gonna try doing makepkg, see if i get better results. in the meantime, how can i tell it where to install? the whole ROOT: thing confuses me...i'm not sure that's what i need to do.

that doesn't sound like a way to install to a specific destination, but i can't tell.

Leave the parameter of checkinstall, just run checkinstall . The location can be set using
./configure --prefix=/what/you/want before running make.

awesome. thanks so much! worked like a charm ^^