Best way to handle installing from source?

2.718281828 · 08-29-2006, 07:41 PM

I've been using Slackware 9.1 since it came out, and I've installed most of my software from the source code if I couldn't find a Slackware package for it. I've been using the standard ./configure; make; make install. As soon as Slackware 11 is finished, I'm going to install that but I'm not sure how I should handle installing programs from source.

I've been thinking about making all of my programs into packages using something like checkinstall. I've heard checkinstal can cause problems sometimes, and I see that slacktrack is in Slackware's /extra directory, but I don't know much about that program. I also see from another thread on these forums that there's a src2pkg program that might do what I want. Ideally, in addition to having a package for every program (so I can easily list and remove installed programs), it would be nice to be able to control where a program installs. Right now, I have programs distributed seeminly at random among /usr, /usr/games, /usr/local, /usr/local/games, /opt, and who knows where else.

Any thoughts on a good way to manage programs installed from source?

MannyNix · 08-29-2006, 08:06 PM

Hi, welcome to the forum.
Have you tried the tutorials from http://www.linuxpackages.net/howto.php ?
There other threads around, use search... here are some of them:
liquidtenmilion
How do YOU manage software?
another1
Check also http://slackwiki.org/Category:Tutorials
Hope it helps

jong357 · 08-29-2006, 08:08 PM

makepkg

It's the best and only way IMO.. It would be worth anyones while to learn how to build slackware packages if they use slackware. Study the *.SlackBuild scripts on slackware's ftp site. Really easy and simple.

You don't even have to make scripts if it feels like too much of a waste of time. This is probably the shortest route to building a package.

Code:

./configure --prefix=/usr
make
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/packagename
cd /tmp/packagename
makepkg -l y -c n packagename.tgz
installpkg packagename.tgz

That won't give you a description when you install, stripped binaries and libs, compressed man pages, compressed info pages and some other possible things that are required for a "proper" slackware package, but it still works.

But there are a number of other alternatives, a few of which you've listed already.

Franklin · 08-29-2006, 08:12 PM

For what it's worth, I use checkinstall and have not had any problems.
For packages I build for my own use, it is great.

I'm not sure I would use it for packages I was making for others, but I have no intention of doing that at this point.

I have heard that it has improved much of late, but I would not know that from experience as i've only been using checkinstall for 6-8 months.

My 2 cents.

2.718281828 · 08-29-2006, 09:31 PM

Thanks for your replies. I'll look into the options everyone mentioned. I don't know how makepkg escaped my notice, and I think I once saw the linuxpackages.net howto that mannyslack mentioned, but that a few was years ago, and I probably thought at the time that I'd never be making my own packages so I didn't read it.

I'm leaning towards using a program that ships with Slackware, since maybe that means it earned Pat's "seal of approval," so I guess that leaves me with makepkg, checkinstall, and slacktrack. Of course, if anyone has any other recommendations, feel free to chime in.