I'm running Ubuntu 4.1 under VMware on my Thinkpad T42, and one of the annoying things is the trackpoint scroll feature doesn't work in Linux (fyi... a trackpoint is the little pencil-eraser-looking mouse "nub" on thinkpads and scrolling is achieved by holding down the middle button and moving the trackpoint).

So I found this link that might fix it - http://rsim.cs.uiuc.edu/~sachs/tp-scroll/ . I've downloaded the tp-scroll.c and am ready to follow the first instruction, which is to execute the following command: gcc -o tp-scroll tp-scroll.c -lm

Questions:

1) What exactly am I doing by running GCC? Just taking a guess, it looks like I'm using tp-scroll.c source code to make a tp-scroll file (please correct me if I'm wrong). Am I re-compiling the kernel, which I read a lot about, in any way or just compiling the trackpoint driver?

2) Where should I put the xxx.c file before I complile it? In /tmp? Does it matter?

3) Does it matter where I put the resulting tp-scroll file? I know I can point the rc.local file to wherever I place it, but is there a "proper" place for it? /bin?

Thanks in advance.

you're not recompiling the kernel. you're just creating an executable like you think you are. put the resulting file anywhere in your path.
such as /usr/local/bin. compile it anywhere you wish.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Why not just distribute the binary, as opposed to making users compile it? (Actually, I see the rpm there but it's a general question - I've seen other utilities that distribute source-only). Is this a GPL thing, or are there kernel-specifc issues that make compiling preferable?

Thanks again.

programs have to link to the correct locations in the libraries on your system. or they could be static and that would make the files huge.