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Linux :Compile Source Code - And Solve Problems.

tuxradar.com — Building software from source - that's a bit old-school, isn't it? Who wants to wrestle with the command line, hunting down dependencies and coaxing the GCC compiler into running properly? Well, it does sound like a strange thing to do in this world of binary packages and online repositories.

Who dugg this? Made popular Mar 14, 2009

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  • computershack, on 03/14/2009, -12/+42No thanks.
  • ism70605, on 03/14/2009, -6/+35This looks like a fun way to spend a weekend.
  • vinceislegend, on 03/14/2009, -5/+25Should you want to uninstall said software, however, may the gods have mercy on your soul.
  • icenine6, on 03/14/2009, -0/+20If you really want to compile from source, just use Gentoo. Or use Slackware, and compile using Slackbuilds.
  • josejimenez, on 03/14/2009, -17/+35What? Spend 100 hours tweaking Linux code to get a 0.5% performance boost on a Fibonacci sequence? Sure, if you have no life.

    Due to the incredible advances in CPUs, compiling from source is absolutely, utterly 2000ish.
  • McDutchie, on 03/14/2009, -4/+18My tip for building from source: use Slackware. The default installation is complete and set up for building from source; there is no need to bother with -dev packages or any other form of dependency hell.
  • jamesmcm, on 03/14/2009, -1/+14I'd recommend Gentoo.
  • newtontwo, on 03/14/2009, -0/+13This is assuming you install to the default prefix (i.e. /usr/local). If you're concerned with removing any software then you should adopt your own location for installation. This is actually what /opt is intended for (see http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Man ...

    If your response to that is that it isn't automatically included in your path, then either learn how to add it, or symlink the pertinent binary to a location in your path. It's actually all quite simple.
  • dotRoot, on 03/14/2009, -0/+13You don't HAVE to compile stuff in most Linux distributions as they have package managers. Ones that find, install, and update your software. However, Linux is about choice, so if you want to compile something, then you can do so, without worrying about legacy support.
  • roebeet, on 03/14/2009, -0/+11You mean Candyland?
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -6/+17that's the same backwards thinking that leads to software bloat, which, statistically leads to the potential more bugs... more code = more bugs?

    sure, there's a line somewhere, but i'm tired of the argument that throwing better hardware at the problem can fix poor software design.
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -0/+11by your logic, doing any of those steps suggests 'writing software', rather than all of the steps.

    so, software testers 'write' software ?

    writing software is coding. the other steps help you get it working right.
  • T8erT0T, on 03/14/2009, -10/+20***** that noise. If she ain't in a repo, she ain't worth it.
  • dotRoot, on 03/14/2009, -1/+11You know all about Linux, because you've used RedHat (What, 7.0?) and you used Ubuntu recently for a month?

    Then you'd know I was talking about choice as in you can essentially do as you please in Linux.
  • feignNU, on 03/14/2009, -0/+10dugg for gentoo
  • raydeen, on 03/14/2009, -3/+13Some? I think you mean Damn Near All.
  • 4321234, on 03/14/2009, -3/+12If you read the article, you would have seen examples why.
  • Gudeldar, on 03/14/2009, -0/+8Compiling from source is not for everyone. Well its not for most people. Ok ok its only for a very few people who really care about the small performance improvement or bleeding edge version.
  • merky1, on 03/14/2009, -1/+9Another nice compile from source article, but needs to move the reasoning for compiling to the front of the article. One of the nice things about Linux is the flexibility to do things like this, but its also one of the downfalls.

    What happens when you want to just compile one program, and then your distro releases an upgrade? The article lightly touches on this, but doesn't quite run through the scenario. Yes compiling can give you new features, but it adds some architectural complexities.
  • BOFH139, on 03/14/2009, -0/+8Excuse Me, But REAL Programmers Use Butterflies.
    http://xkcd.com/378/
  • Gudeldar, on 03/14/2009, -2/+10If you had read the article you would have realized it wasn't about tweaking code at all. And it certainly wouldn't take 100 hours.
  • Gudeldar, on 03/14/2009, -1/+8Compiling != writing
  • MattBD, on 03/14/2009, -2/+9I've had to compile from source more often when using my MacBook than when using Ubuntu, AND I've had to install all the dependencies first without the aid of a package manager. PyQt required two things compiling from source, and I just gave up on PyGame and used Kubuntu instead - on there it's just sudo apt-get install python-pygame.
    Just goes to show that package management really goes a long way in making something easier - oh, and it's great for pissing off Apple fanboys!
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -5/+12..and some software and drivers on windows still makes you reboot after an install.
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -2/+9who says you can't do this at work?
  • 4321234, on 03/14/2009, -1/+8That's like saying "to avoid nagging worries, get a lobotomy".
  • lead2thehead, on 03/14/2009, -6/+13Linux has come a long way. 15 years ago, you had to recompile your kernel every time you wanted to add a new module and half the time it wouldn't work. Now you just type "yum install".
  • redxii, on 03/14/2009, -3/+9I've been told off "'./configure && make && make install' how ***** hard was that?". That works ideally when you already have all the dependencies & minimum version of them.

    Also Windows is unlike Linux where one program usually won't affect another completely unrelated program.. to be fair, many Windows programs, even open source, tend to include all needed libraries in the program's folder; like GTK or NSS or QT. The last time I used Ubuntu they weren't very eager to release a Thunderbird 2.0 package, and when the next version of Firefox is released they probably are going to only include that in the next version of Ubuntu. They weren't exactly up to date on many software. If I had a connectivity problem w/ Pidgin resolved in an update they'd be like "F Off or compile it yourself". I thought Ubuntu was supposed to be user-friendly :/? Then again updating Pidgin could potentially bring down the entire OS or at least the window manager, so I guess I can see their concern..
  • inactive, on 03/14/2009, -0/+6You still have to purchase and manually install proprietary software you asshat.

    On that note, I just installed a multitude of games on wine and they all work flawlessly.
  • raydeen, on 03/14/2009, -0/+6Linux has a lot more press and word of mouth. Not saying that makes it better, it's just more well known to the general audience.
  • DJAltair, on 03/14/2009, -1/+7You clearly didn't look too far. I can find anything I want in the repos alone, let alone the mass amount of stuff that comes up with a simple search of Google. Anything that comes up when searching for Windows functionality is almost always pay software. No thanks.

    I switched over to Ubuntu from Windows about 2 years ago and haven't looked back.
  • mikael110, on 03/14/2009, -0/+6"Who wants to wrestle with the command line, hunting down dependencies and coaxing the GCC compiler into running properly?"

    actually that sounds pretty fun.
  • Gudeldar, on 03/14/2009, -0/+6I think it spreads the message that there is more than one way to almost everything with Linux. The article points out that you can just use a package manager and install a binary.
  • Frostek, on 03/14/2009, -0/+6I disagree - it spreads the message of "Linux - it's as technical as you want it to be".

    You can install via DEBs or from repositories if you want, but if you're the more technical user there's more out there for you too.
  • srg13, on 03/15/2009, -0/+5Why? Just keep the source directory around when you install it, and then if you want to remove it just do a 'sudo make uninstall'
  • TomFrost, on 03/14/2009, -7/+12You're not writing software for this, you're compiling it. Put on a raw installation with openssh2, and you can have a terminal window open at work to have everything compiled and done by the time you get home.

    Not that this is my preferred way of setting up Linux, mind. I did stage-1 Gentoo and LFS and all that adventurous stuff in college, and it was a fantastic learning experience. But if you're like me and want something that Just Works, then go with a fast binary distro. People here are sick of hearing about Ubuntu over and over again, but for hardware support and general community, it's hard to beat.
  • ileftfark, on 03/14/2009, -0/+5Yeah, but once that maze of text scrolling in the terminal completes and brings you back to the BASH prompt and you suddenly realize you've solved all dependencies, you feel like a ***** God among men.
  • travist120, on 03/14/2009, -2/+7My only problem that I have with source compiling is dependency hell. I swear to you, I've spent days googling for software that doesn't seem to exist. It's clearly an adventure, albeit a frustrating keyboard breaking one.
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -4/+9You have no idea what you're talking about. This is exactly the same problem on ANY OS when library dependencies are upgraded. Think about all of those service packs for windows that make your applications stop working, and they've broken MS applications with their own OS updates, too.

    Saying that updating pidgin (or any other userland app) could bring down the entire OS is ridiculous.
  • feignNU, on 03/14/2009, -0/+5windows doesn't even come with a compiler. Linux is *designed* for it, and in windows you can do it if you really ***** try. That's what makes it so special.
  • inactive, on 03/14/2009, -8/+12You guys are all idiots. It doesn't take a "weekend" or "a 100 hours" to do this. If you know what you're doing and RTFM, it's not so difficult.

    wget hxxp://somesite.com/foo.tar.bz2
    tar -xjvf foo.tar.bz2
    cd foo
    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install
  • feignNU, on 03/14/2009, -0/+4Just want to echo Frostek and Gudeldar.

    Nothing in the article said, "this is the only way to install software on linux! Mortals beware!!"

    You people all complained when there were too many "top 10 reasons to use linux" articles, and now that there are actually some with real substance, you complain about them too. If you don't use linux and you don't care about linux, don't read the linux articles, it's really pretty simple.
  • feignNU, on 03/14/2009, -1/+5You are ignorant. It *is* automated. It's called the package manager.

    This is for linux users who *want* to dive in a little deeper and have a little more control over their system. Screw the performance boosts, sometimes, as the article says, compiling is just the easiest way to get some experimental feature enabled in a piece of software you want.

    This isn't a "top 10 reasons why you should use linux" article (thank god), it's a "so you use linux and you're curious to know more..." kind of article. If you don't use linux, what are you here for?
  • Holstien, on 03/14/2009, -1/+5This is a really trivial discussion of how to compile something. It would be a lot more fruitful if it covered different optimization flags for different architectures. The article also mentions "dealing with errors" but doesn't really delve into that at all. Very cursory discussion.
  • george99, on 03/14/2009, -1/+5You could always: send your changes upstream, build a package for your distro for your source, block the update for that program. Same thing could happen on any OS. Regardless of what OS you use, you still need to pay attention to what you have installed, no matter how automated the updates become.

  • jamesmcm, on 03/14/2009, -0/+4Well if you use Gentoo or Arch it's quite easy. I would recommend one of those as they can manage the compiled apps.
  • feignNU, on 03/14/2009, -0/+4If you don't want to do it, don't use linux, it's cool with me.

    It's not like this was an article aimed at converting anyone to linux. This was an introductory piece about compiling applications from source on a linux machine, which is a good thing for any serious linux user to know how to do.
  • computershack, on 03/14/2009, -0/+4And when it chucks out some random error usually in the make process?
  • jtwyrrpirate, on 03/14/2009, -0/+4Not knocking Gentoo or Slackware...but in the world of Unix-like OS's, FreeBSD's ports system is in a class by itself.
  • dirtyforker, on 03/15/2009, -0/+3You can use apt-build. This will automatically build packages for you and as it uses the same dependency checking as apt-get, gives far fewer errors. It also results in software that is tracked by the package manager.
    The downside is that you are still using source code from the repositories, so you are still not always getting the latest from upstream. You do get to set your own optimisations though. It's not as complete and configurable system as gentoo, but it does give you a large part of that which you can mix-n-match with a normal ubuntu/debian system.
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