nice it took me forever to learn how to do this on my own in linux, which lead to man a lot of screwed of directories. But once you learn it once it is the easiest thing in the world

superbryant

"and there's no better feeling when you're starting to get comfortable at the command line than the first time you successfully compile software from source"

Totally... when I complied a program for the first time, I thought it was the coolest thing in the world!!!

Luigi193

@zhinker: Most of the programs that you would need to compile from source are going to be linux/unix programs, and therefore would not compile in Windows. It might be possible to compile some using Cygwin in Windows, but most of the time there will be binary executable if there is a Windows port of the program.

wakeboarderal05

nice link. My only complaint is that all the command line instructions are written for Linux users and aren't really applicable to Windows.

Does anyone know what the equivalent commands would be?

zhinker

I use Linux and while it's not as necessary as it used to be, if you have to have an unpackaged program, compiling from source is getting easier all the time...

Check the install file for dependencies, use your distro's package manager to make sure you have them, configure, make, install. It was a nightmare when I first started out, not it's almost a no brainer. Not just because I'm more competent with Linux now, but because things rarely fail for me on the first attempt.

aphexbr

@zhinker: If you find any source files that can be used by Windows, you'll need a Windows C compiler to run nmake and other programs. You'll have to download the free Visual C++ Express (unless you have the full one in Visual Studio already) and use the special C++ console/terminal (unless you add the compiling programs to your path). I tried compiling some Perl modules a while back in Vista and it worked.

andrewheiss

@superbryant: Same here. And to this day I still don't think I was doing it properly. That was the one thing that kept me going back to Windows... that and the random sound problems I was experiencing with different distros.

desigi

Man, I don't know what my problem is but every time I try to compile something from the source on my Mac, it never works. I've tried VLC, Firefox, and some other utility that I can't think of the name of right now. I'll read this when I get home and see if it helps.

satan gave me a taco

I think you should generally steer clear of any software that requires you to download and compile source code.

jarmod

@satan gave me a taco: Make sure you have the Developer Tools installed. They're on your OS X DVD, but don't install by default.

dphelan

@jarmod: please shut up

sphetr2

Do not install the Developer Tools from your OS X DVD. They're old.

Register at developer.apple.com and download the most recent version of Xcode software from the ADC site.

Read the source code bundle's documentation very carefully -- paying special attention to prerequisites. Good luck.

Deprong Mori

@zhinker: if you install cygwin (including the developers tools) most of the same instructions apply. But to be honest it's still hard work and you'll probably be better off finding a precompiled binary of windows.

ianturton

Wow sweet... I've been trying to get rogue to run on myPowerPc (Macbook G3) Linux machine for days (my real laptop's getting repaired).... I had no idea it was configure... make... install.

Amulet of Yendor, here I come!

q335r49

That's funny, I just put up a new CentOS server, named "nyx" :D

@Luigi193: The ultimate command line comfort test: Compile a kernel lol

nsr81

Sometimes compiling from source has it's advantages ;)

For example, isn't it "the Gimp" that doesn't offer executables from their site, you have to "go elsewhere" to find the executables...? For some reason I don't know.

But I ran into a program that had a "nag screen" of sorts, but since the author released the source code (via sourceforge) - one with craftiness, could peruse the code, find what needed to be removed, remove it, and re-compile it on their own without the nag.

ahoier

The tips from TFA are for Unix-alike systems, such as Linux-based OSs.

For the "./configure && make && make install" sequence, you can thank the GNU Autotools suite which includes GNU Autoconf. This is documented on Wikipedia as the GNU build system.

Building from source is fun and convenient, but you have to read and follow directions (if there is any documentation to begin with, huh). For further tools worthy of study that help with the installation of source-compiled apps, I recommend looking at roastbeef (downloads from source control and compiles for you, on Ubuntu) and GNU Stow (Unix-alike-platform app installer to /usr/local/bin or other places).

And yes, Windows users don't have it this easy (because of the install from binary culture), but that's a topic for another post. For an example of compiling a non-trivial open-source Windows app with freeware tools, here are instructions for Lifehacker's hero AutoHotKey, complete with dialog boxes, haha.

piyo