Learning different build commands for building from source?

Question

Hi,

How do you learn all the commands for building programs like mysql and git from source? For example, this article:

Installing MySQL on Mac OS X (Hivelogic)

Is there a good book that teaches you command-line tools for building, makefiles, etc.?

Thanks -Chris

Answer 1

Not really. The trick is to read the README and the INSTALL and take it from there.

There are a lot of general conventions that are followed, there is normally a configure script and you can run it asking it for help. Once that's done you then do the make.

./configure
make
make test
sudo make install

The README or INSTALL file should tell you what to do though.

Answer 2

For any given project, there should be documentation that comes along with its source bundle that describes how to build it. If you want to add similar behaviour to your own application, check out these programs/packages and their documentation:

• gcc
• GNU make
• autoconf

You'll find a lot of projects out there whose build/install instructions are as simple as:

$ ./configure
$ make install

The tools listed above are enough to get to that level for your project. IMHO, the GNU make manual is one of the greatest pieces of technical documentation anywhere. Get started there and add autoconf support if your project needs to be cross-platform or has some complicated setup options.