Hello, i have tried to install dozens of programs and i cannot install any of them, no matter what 'make' dosnt work, the only programs that i can install are the ones that came with SuSE 8.2, I dont really expect any help, unless you know of a program that will install the program for me or something

Thank You

If you put an example of how you doing and what program you need to install we might be able to help ya

Give some specifics. Are there any error messages when you type "make". Give a blow by blow account of how you are trying to install whatever it is you are trying to install, and then you will be able to be helped

It's just a guess of course, but I fear that this user has not unpacked the tar archive before he has tried to do a make, or that he has not changed directory to the unpacked source before issuing the make command, or that he has not run the configure script before issuing the make command.

Corin, i have successfully unpacked the tars into a diectroy, and changed the directory, before doing the make command.

What I did:
Opened the Terminal (the package already unpacked)
Entered cd /directory name/ (already at base dir)
Entered the configure command, no errors
Entered the make command and the error:
"make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop."

NOTE: I am in the directory where there is a 'Makefile'

Is there any reference to ./autoconf ? Check the README and INSTALL files.

sorry

Proud, no there is not any mention of ./autoconf , and it would not let me do the command in the terminal

# Guides to software and installation and uninstallation
LNAG - How do I install a program I downloaded from the Internet?
Rute Guide's software explanation
You might want to check out CheckInstall to manage source code installations/uninstallation

Okay, now we know where you are at.

I think what is happening is that the Makefile that you have found is indeed being processed by make. However what is usually the case with software packages is that there are numerous sub directories with code to be processed. So the top level Makefile itself issues a make command to run the Makefile in the eg src directory to compile the code there. BUT because you have not run the configure script first, to generate all of the Makefiles in the sub-directories, then the process stops with the error you mentioned.

So in general, what you have to do is to run a script configure in the top level directory to set everything up before you run make.

Now there is however another possibility! If you are trying to install some old software packages from before the era of the
./configure, make era, and they are X11 programs and have a file called Imakefile in the top level directory, then you need to do

xmkmf -a

followed by

make

Of course the simplest thing to do would have been to tell us all the name of the software package which you were trying to install and that would have cut out all the needless speculation and saved a lot of time.

And just to make matters worse, there are some packages like exim which do not have a configure script, or a Imakefile and one has to manually edit the Makefile for the appropriate system before running make.

Installing software packages from source is not necessarily always the simplest of tasks.

Here are some of the programs i am trying to install, they include:
GAIM, AMSN, Mozzila, Xine, OpenOffice amoung many others, including IRC applications and FTP applications, now none of these installs work, at all, this is whay i did not tell you what the programs were, because there were too many, I tried rpms and they did not work either

Are not most of these applications included as RPMs with SuSE professional 8.2?

You should have no problem installing at least Mozilla and OpenOffice from the Yast2 interface after inserting your DVD in your DVD drive (or doing the CD-ROM shuffle in the CD-ROM drive).

You need to limit yourself to dealing with one installation problem at a time as you are just going to get very frustrated (as you have done) if you just keep going on without thinking about what you are doing and why things are failing.

Did you actually install SuSE professional 8.2 on your machine yourself?

The Makefile is often created as a result of what happens during the configure stage... which brings me to ask: did you type ./configure (yes, dot forwardslash configure)? If not, then from here stem your problems. configure is a 'program' (actually a script, but that's splittin hairs) in the directory you just created by unpacking the files. To run programs in the current directory in Linux, you need to put a ./ in front of the filename. Try it.