These are the notes that were taken down during the SLUGlet meeting on Friday night.
* download some source from the INTERNET wget http://foobar.org/downloads/foobar-1.0.tar.gz * unpack the source tarball: tar zxf foobar-1.0.tar.gz tarballs can also be bzipped: tar jxf foobar-1.0.tar.bz2 * change into the source directory of the newly unpacked source tree cd foobar-1.0/ - check the INSTALL and README files first - they may have dependencies or special instructions - you may need development libraries (-dev or -devel packages) - you will definitely need a compiler for the language the code is written in! (gcc for C, g++ for C++, binutils, make) * configure the software (a pre-compilation step that readies the source code for your system, errors go in config.log, configure --help will give you help information): ./configure * build the software make * install the software (depending on where you want to install to, you may need to be root, it normally puts in in /usr/local, but you or developers can change that, most RPM or .deb packages go in /usr): make install making a package for RPM based systems: foobar-1.0.tar.gz contains a file called foobar.spec rpmbuild -ta foobar-1.0.tar.gz rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/foobar-1.0-1.i386.rpm making a debian package: foobar-1.0.tar.gz contains a debian/ directory tar zxf foobar-1.0.tar.gz cd foobar-1.0 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -us dpkg -i ../foobar_1.0-1_i386.deb - you need fakeroot, dpkg-dev, and build-essential packages installed - read the manpage for dpkg-buildpackage and the documentation on www.debian.org/devel for more information -> checkinstall <- magical package building software compiling from source = high maintenance how do I know when to update your software? how do I find out when new versions come out, and how do I know whether I need to update? - project website + announce mailing list + changelog on website - freshmeat.net - word of mouth - security mailing lists (for hard core software builders) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://spacepants.org/jaq.gpg -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
