hi guys.. be gentle.. it's my first time!

i've just tried to install xine on fc3. i downloaded xine-lib and xine-ui. then i unpacked the lib file... 'configure'... 'make install'. no problems. then i unpacked xine-ui... 'configure'... but it gave me n error message and wouldn't 'make install'.
i did a search and found someone who had a similar error message and it turned out to be a missing lib.
i'd closed the terminal so in an attempt to recreate the error message (so i could look closely for the problem) i tried redoing the whole procedure. now when i do xine-ui/configure it says it's already configured and i have to '"make distclean" there first'. i assume that undoes the prev config but i don't know how to do it!!
this is really frustrating me as i now have an ALMOST completely installed application on the system and im worried I won't be able to undo all the stuff i've done.

pls help!! i'm very new at this whole linux thing....

you need to post the error configure is giving you

also, don't get rid of those source directories yet.....

thank you for your quick response...
this is what i get when i try to configure xine-ui :-

[root@arsenic ~]# xine-ui-0.99.3/configure
checking build system type... i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking target system type... i686-redhat-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
configure: error: source directory already configured; run "make distclean" there first

you have two options, instead of "./configure" run "make distclean" to completely clean out the source tree or remove the source directory and extract the tarball again to create a clean source directory. try configure again and see if that helps. also, depending on how you are installing this, you could run into problems ( with the typical ./configure, make, make install). by the way, xine ( the engine, not the user interface) uses the shell script method ( it creates an executable shell script called xine-config) to pass parameters back to the compiler, make sure xine-config is in your PATH to build a xine user interface ( xine_ui, gxine, kaffiene, totem, etc...).

ok... sorry __J but I don't think you realise just how inept I am with Linux. What you said seems to make a lot of sense except I'm not sure how to run "make distclean". could you please give me the command?

don't worry, it all comes with time and trial and error.

cd into the xine_ui source directory and do:

make distclean

this is what the configure script is asking you to do.

There are different "targets" that the program make can make and they are define in the Makefile in the source directory of whatever you are attempting to compile. Most of the time, the targets you will use will consist of "all", "install" and "clean". for example, when you first enter a source directory you normall run:

./configure <options>

to configure your build. then:

make

the above command calls the program make which will make the target "all" since it was not told specifically to make a different target.

make install

this target is the one that actually installs the program and it's accompanying files onto your hardrive.

make clean

this one removes all of the object files and executables from the source directory ( make distclean is a variation of this, and not all source directories have it. it generally cleans more thouroghly than a regular "make clean").

ok... i ran "make distclean" in the xine-ui src, and then I ran configure and that worked.... but "make install" still failed. not sure how many words you're allowed to post here, so here's the output from the terminal that seems to be where the problem is....
...
Making install in po
make[1]: Entering directory `/root/po'
`if test ! -z ""; then echo ""; else case "xine-ui-0.99.3/mkinstalldirs" in /*) echo "xine-ui-0.99.3/mkinstalldirs" ;; *) echo "../xine-ui-0.99.3/xine-ui-0.99.3/mkinstalldirs" ;; esac; fi` /usr/local/share
/bin/sh: ../xine-ui-0.99.3/xine-ui-0.99.3/mkinstalldirs: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [install-data-yes] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/po'
make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1

You can try the rpms from the xine nightly builds page. They work fine on Fedora Core 3.