This is what I call an academic question.
I am not asking for a specific solution , just wondering why things works differently and why.

I have been working on installing a package and until now I thought that
"configure / make /make install" is Linux way to accomplish that.

I had to go thru this installation process few times to satisfy dependencies.
All worked fine until I run into compressed file when my OS after download suggested to use some kind of "software install".
OK, I did it , however , the package depended on this last one could not find it.
Verified by dpkg that it was indeed installed.

So I did took the original compressed file and extracted it the usual way , but it extracted into two compressed files - control and data.
At that point I stopped looking for familiar "configure".

Basically I am just curious why the last package installation is no longer simple - extract and run configure etc.

Is this pretty normal for distro to "do their stuff" or is the "configure / make /make install" on its way out as do-do bird?

BTW the "software installation" (GUI) is slower than molasses and gives no progress indication. I would guess it still does same as "configure / make /make install " which takes time , but keeps silent about it. ( No need to speculate about it here).

Cheers

Not at all normal. This is how you would compile a single package and this, as you discovered, does not do dependency checking. All Linux distros have a software package manager, whether cli or gui depends on the distro. Highly (strongly) suggest you use the package manager for whatever distro you have. You didn't provide details so no way to tell.

Using the distro provided package manager assures the packages come from a trusted source and also that dependencies are satisfied.

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We need more information here as to exactly what you are asking about. There are plenty of things different between different package managers, and the concept of building from source is entirely separate from all of that. Unfortunately from what I've seen, you do not recognize that building and installing from source is not package management.Perhaps you can explain more clearly what you mean by citing that a distribution would "do their stuff", because this is a figure of speech which leaves things very open to interpretation.

Building and installing a package from source is not,"on its way out".While telling others to not speculate, you in fact, have speculated, and your speculation is incorrect. Package managers do NOT use configure / make / sudo make install.

Quick Summary, which maybe you'll find helpful:

1. There are package managers, some examples of them are dpkg, opkg, aptitude.
2. There are others.
3. These package managers have a defined way you are supposed to make an install package to be used by these package managers.
4. There are no requirements that anyone developing software make package files suitable to be used by these, or any other package managers, however it is helpful for those developing software to do make files which can be used by one or more package managers.

When installing software using a package manager:

1. It doesn't always work 100% correctly.
2. The package manager will look for pre-requisite software to ensure that once it finished installing, everything will work.
3. People tend to forget that they may have downloaded a package that was made 20 years ago, or that their Linux distribution is 10 years old. As a result of things like this, there will likely be mismatches in libraries and the list of pre-requisites such that things cannot be resolved using the package manager.
4. More likely, a common thing is that one or more pre-requisite libraries or other software are either not on the system, or not the correct version on the system.
5. In the case of a pre-requisite not being on the system, you add it to your system, if you approve that it's OK to add it, and then try again, and you may iterate on this behavior for a while to satisfy all pre-requisites.
6. In the case of a pre-requisite being on the system, but not the correct version, you update it to be the correct version.
7. Caveat: Sometimes the author of a package may check pre-requisites and actually have a bug where they check for an exact version as opposed to checking for a minimum version. Or perhaps they know for a fact that only a specific version of a pre-requisite really does work. This means you have to install exactly the version they are expecting, if you wish to proceed. Or you can decide that you don't prefer their selections and halt trying to install.

An entirely different subject is to build and install from source. The process of configure / make / sudo make install have absolutely nothing to do with package installers and package management.

There are no guarantees that all of this works. The author of the software you're trying to install, either by source, or using a package manager, may have done a poor job. They may have used a very limited set of pre-requisites which rapidly went out of date and no longer can be satisfied. The author may have abandoned the project and not done any further work with it.

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I'll probably get into trouble for reposting if I expand on this.

The way I interpret this - package manager is not necessarily same as "software install" I have mentioned.
I did downland file from Debian "source" with "deb" in file name which let Ubuntu to suggest to use "software installer".

It this case I picked the source, so it probably was OK as far being trusted.


I have been using real package manager - apt or apt-get which gets the file from repository which would meet the "trusted source".

Am I on track so far?

Addendum
Looks like this may actually provide some real answers.
I may come back when I have chance to digest that.

https://wiki.debian.org/HowToPackageForDebian

Aptitude is a package manager.

A file with a .deb extension is typically a Debian install package file.

It would be helpful if you avoided persisting with these types of comments:Instead just ask your questions and please avoid pre-concluding things about the LQ forums.

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This article from Debian should give you an in-depth explanation of Debian package management: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/d...e/ch02.en.html

Debian has several legit package managers that have been developed of the years:
apt
aptitude
apt-get
Synaptic (a GUI tool)
They all still exist and they all are still supported.

The compile/make/make install compiles from sources and requires user to resolve dependencies manually; it also requires kernel headers to be present, and not all distros install kernel headers by default (though you can find them in the repos).

I think it is wise to know how to compile from sources, but, if I can find a package in the repos, I generally prefer it because, frankly, it's easier.

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remembering anneranch's previous posts, i think the argumentation goes like this:

• in my (anneranch) experience, apt is broken
• i need to install software manually
• i want a tool that does that for me

that's where the circle closes, and you'd have been better off figuring out apt in the first place.

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I mean, that's what dpkg or dpkg-deb is. Or tar -xvf. The "problem" with the latter is that if you download a .tar.gz it is typically source, which wants to be compiled, and if it's already compiled-- then it's probably already packaged in a .deb. Hence, dpkg-deb if you really want to open it manually.

dpkg, unlike dpkg-deb, will go further and install it for you-- but then (just like apt-get install) will complain and be petulant if deps are missing.