Make, Make Install etc
 

What is this Make actually?
Sometimes some packages require this..

what does it do actually? I currently am just blindly following the procedures.. but would love to find out more and understand


thanks

make is what compiles programs. sorry for such a simple definition, but i'm not a programmer, just a simple end-user. you can always do "man make" or google for more info. :)

Make is a tool to automate the steps necessary to compile complex programs.

In a nutshell, the developer(s) create a file (named Makefile) that contains rules for how the program should be built. It doesn't actually perform the compile itself; it calls other programs (usually gcc) based on what the rules specify. At a very abstract level you could kind of, sort of look at it as a shell script; an intelligent shell script.

Like synaptical said, if you'd like more information, check out the man page, or download and read the GNU Make manual.

the main cool thing it does is as you work on a project and change stuff "make" keeps track of file dependancies and what's been changed and only recompiles wha's needed and not the whole package.
otherwise writing large programs would mean hours to see if your two new lines of code fixed the problem. but with make you get instant comfirmation you still didn't get it right.