Real Linux Newbie question
 

Hi everyone,
Im sure everyone (besides me) understands compiling.
I am confused by the idea of compiling from source.

I just got done compiling and installing GCC from source.
Here is what i did, i put the source code in a temp folder,
then i used ./configure, make and then make install.

Now can i safely delete that temp folder i had the source in,
now that its been installed ?
or would there still be dependencies ?

i seen references saying i needed to use clean or make uninstall.
but then thought using make uninstall would remove the gcc i just
finished installing. (so that didnt make sense to me)

thanks.

make uninstall should indeed uninstall the program.

You can simply delete that temp directory, but, if you think at some point you might want to uninstall, you might want to keep it around, at least until you are certain everything is working properly.

Hi frankbell,
thanks for your reply, very helpful.
i wouldnt mind keeping it around, but the folder is almost 1.5GB total.
i do see your point about keeping it long enough to make sure its all working.
in case i need to uninstall it using make uninstall.
thanks for helping clear that up.
:cool:

as above "make uninstall" done as the root user NORMALLY????? will uninstall things built

not always



most of the time it is not needed to build from source , a lot of extra effort needs to go into doing that
-- it however can BE FUN !!! yes in the fun activity thing - it is SOLVING A PUZZLE sometimes
I am doing that right NOW with some Astronomy software for imaging from NASA spacecraft -- a linking error - the WORST type of error


so for fun or sometimes that is the ONLY way


but for most things there really is no need .
Your OS's package manager should have 99.99999 of everything that 99.9% of people will need

years ago in 2001 i started using MinGW and CygWin ( used MinGW mostly ) to build linux software on XP
I found that i used gcc in Mingw MORE THAN the Visual Studio 6 and 7 that i paid cash for

4 years of that was a very good education to using Linux 99.9999999% of the time


now most programs use " Autotools"
an e-book
http://it-ebooks.info/book/1730/
a 18.7 MiB pdf

but some use "CMake"
some use "Qmake"
and some use "SCons"
and some use a 100% manually wrote "Makefile"


so the upshot is basically
READ THE CODE

for autotools there is normally a "configure" script ( not ALWAYS!!! sometimes you have to build the configure script)
read the output of it
the HELP options that are built in will tell you a lot

and open the Makefile in a text editor and read the options in the file
there can be MANY
all
check
clean
distclean
or if it is a complex program make only part of it

Gmic is a complex one , you can make all of it or only 1 ,2 or all 3 parts of it

almost all programs will have a README and a INSTALL text file
and / or a folder called "doc" docs" "instructions" something like that

so it is normally a VERY good idea to READ and do somre readding
the files , the WEBSITE for the program


a VERY VERY VERY GREAT !!! program to learn with is "The Gimp "
http://www.gimp.org/
there books upon more books on building this program
and web sites

this one program is very well documented
and so are all the PREREQUISITE that go into building it

Hi John VV,
see 1 problem i have is that i have no active packagers on my distro.
I am testing "slax linux" (a tiny linux distro) and the packager it had was broken.
plus very limited to just what the slax "people" had.

my thought is to try to enhance it as it does have the kde desktop and most library files,
but many are missing preventing me from simply adding a new package manager.

my goal is to get synaptic and apt-get working on it.
as many/most of the packages i do have on it are available through synaptic.
i just need to figure whats needed as i go along.

yes i know it may just be simpler to get a different linux distro,
and i will likely end up doing that, but id like to see how far i can get with "slax".

thanks for the tips.

See, he's caught the bug already!