here's a simple one!

can someone point me in the right direction to find out about compiling, how to do it, and all that stuff? i don't know a thing about it, but i want to learn.

a link to some documentation, or a step-by-step, or a walkthrough, or a something-er-other for someone who doesn't even know what compiling is would be fantastic.

thanks!

BTW:
Linux: FC3, updated as of Feb 26th 2005.
program i want to compile: Hydrogen Drum Machine.

1. open your favorite x-term and browse to the directory you saved the hydrogen-0.9.1.tar.gz tarball.
2. "tar -xvf hydrogen-0.9.1.tar.gz" (without the quotes) to extract it to a directory named hydrogen-0.9.1
3. cd hydrogen-0.9.1
4. decide where you would like to install the software, I'm not familiar with Fedora, but likely destinations for X-software is /usr/local or /usr/X11. This location will determine your --prefix flag to use with the ./configure script.
5. "./configure --help" (without quotes) to see any other necessary or desired options. READ THE OUTPUT FROM THIS COMMAND, just in case. Most times you won't need any other options.
6. "./configure --prefix=/usr/local " as an example. This will build the software for installation to the /usr/local directory. Add in any other make options after your prefix, examples would be --disable-gnome , --oss_emu=1 , etc. These options are the ones you saw in the above step. To just accept the developers default configuration values, you can enter "./configure" .
7. When configure is done, type "make" (without the quotes)
8. When the make command is done, use the su command to get root privileges
9. As root, enter "make install"
10. The binary will be installed according to the path options you selected in steps 4-6 above. If this is in your default PATH, typing the name of the program in a term will run it

HTH

LQ has a tutorial article about compiling:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ticle&artid=15