Help Third party app installation

[Derek Broughton]

Aart Koelewijn wrote:

> On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:30:26 -0500, Bill Wright wrote:
> 
>> I am running 8.04 LTS desktop. Being a Windows user for many years I am
>> at a loss on how to install non packaged applications. I downloaded the
>> TAR file, decompressed it, then I am lost? What must I enter on the
>> command line?
> 
> It is seldom necessary to install non packaged applications. For almost
> any task there are suitable applications in the repostories.
> 
> If you really have to use a application for which you can't find anything
> in the repostories, you will almost always find a Readme and/or Install
> file in the toplevel directory after untaring the file. Read those files,
> they will tell you what to do, there is no general instruction for that,
> it depends on the kind of package, source or binary.

Well there can't be a completely general instruction (just as there isn't in
the Windows world), but for the most part:

- untar the file
- cd to the top level of the untarred package
# ./configure
# make
# sudo make install

(and if ./configure exists, but if fails in the "make" step, you probably
needed to install the build-essential package first).

But really, stick to binaries - I can't imagine you're installing much from
source on Windows.
-- 
derek