[PLUG] Compiling Packages: Which Directory?

[Rich Shepard]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Paul Mullen wrote:

> When building software packages from source, is there any convention as to
> which directory the compilation actually takes place in? I've read in some
> places that it's recommended to un-tar the source package to a src/
> directory, and then move to a complementary build/ directory before going
> through the 'make' steps. In my experience, though, that doesn't always
> work. Some packages barf completely when you attempt to build them in a
> directory other than that which contains their source tree. Any thoughts?

  I use two top-level directories for building from source: /opt and
/usr/local. I'll untar in one or the other, cd to that directory, then run
./configure, make and checkinstall from there.

  Others like to build in the /home filesystem. I suppose you could do it
all in /usr/src, too. The end result is determined by $PREFIX in the
configuration step: the executable will be installed in /usr/bin or
/usr/local/bin.

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

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