Do they leave certain basic instructions out of the installation docs just to drive n00bs crazy?

I'm installing xine. It says to unpack and then:
./configure
make install

When I typed in ./configure it said "no such file or directory"
Do I need to do something else before I use the ./configure command, like cd to another directory?

I have gcc 2.96 installed if that is relevant to my question.

Check out our glossary term tar. It might give you some pointers.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ryid=35&long=1

I got the ./configure command to work and got this error message:

C compiler cannot create executables.

What does that mean?

Is it possible to post your config.log file ?? It might be a possible problem with autoconf, you could try to upgrade. But if you can, try to post from your config.log file to get more of the error message.
Also has this happened anyother time while trying to compile programs ?

Let us know !

I don't remember getting this error message before, and I've installed in both 8.1 and 8.2. The entire error message was:
checking whether C compiler (gcc) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler cannot create executables.

I ran cat config.log and here is some of that:

configure: 1359: gcc -o conftest confest -c 1>&5
gcc: installation problem, cannot execute 'ccp0' : No such file or directory
configure: failed program was:
#line 1354 "configure"
#include "confdefs .h"

There was also this, if it helps:

/* Override any gcc2 internal prototype to avoid an error */
/* We use char because int might match the return type of a gcc2
built in and then it's argument prototype would still apply. */
char strerror ( );

int main ( ) {
strerror ( )
; return 0 ; }

Well, I would think something is wrong with gcc since you got:

Are you doing this as root or a regular user ? Have you tried as root ? I would first try to redownload the program first since it stated at the beginning " checking whether C compiler works... no ", could be a bad download in this case, if that doesn't work, may want to update gcc due to that error.

I ran these commands as root.

I'll delete this tarball and download another.

By update, do you mean download the newest version of gcc 3.2?

Yes possibly if the download of the program again doesn't work.

I downloaded another tarball and got the same error message.

I'll try gcc 3.2 and see what happens. I quickly read some of the installation instructions and it mentioned that the newer version could be used with older versions. How will I tell my Linux machine to use the newer version for this install?

This might help, kind of explains installation with other versions of gcc installed. http://www.gnu.org/software/gcc/faq.html#multiple