What I am about to say in response is the customary, GNU, way to do it, but not every package you download and unpack will follow the same procedure. Essentially, you have too look at the file list after unpacking and read whatever is available to read. Usually, you 'll find a README that's mostly about who wrote this, when and the license terms. Usually, you'll find an INSTALL or INSTALLATION (all caps on these) that talks about the steps involved. Usually, there are three steps: ./configure make make install You put a dot slash in front of configure to insure you run the configuration script in that particular directory, and not some other in your path. As you've noticed, not all packages come with such a script, but when they do, you can read them. They're just shell script files (that begin with /bin/sh). So, where you do have one, try more configure to see what's inside one. The make command does the compilation. Assuming it exists with status 0 (no errors, in other words), there is usually a make install that copies to the directories where the program should live, chmod's as appropriate, etc., etc. If you don't want to take the defaults, you should edit Makefile after running .configure and before running make. To learn more, try: info configure info make On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Octavian Rasnita wrote: > Hi all, > > I've compiled the new links that supports Javascript and it seems to work > fine. > Well, I have a question about compiling, or better said, about Linux in > general. > > I've seen that I should give the command ./configure but I don't understand > where is that configure file. > > Can you tell me? > > It is not in the current directory. There is no configure directory in the > current one. > And there is no configure file or directory in the root directory either. > > Thanks. > > Teddy Center: http://teddy.fcc.ro/ > Mail: orasnita at home.ro > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org
