How to build this project?

Question

Hi, I've been a visual studio developer for long and just trying to understand how things are in linux/unix worl. I found an open source project (Gcomandos) in source forge and tried to build it. when I download the source, I get these files:

16/02/2007  05:16 PM            25,987 aclocal.m4
16/02/2007  05:17 PM           127,445 configure
16/02/2007  05:16 PM             1,925 configure.ac
17/03/2010  03:48 PM    <DIR>          gComandos
16/02/2007  05:16 PM               332 gcomandos.pc.in
25/11/2006  10:03 PM             9,233 install-sh
16/02/2007  05:16 PM               353 Makefile.am
16/02/2007  05:17 PM            20,662 Makefile.in
16/02/2007  05:16 PM             1,019 Makefile.include
25/11/2006  10:03 PM            11,014 missing

I am now lost. I tried making the .am or the .in files, but GnuMake says there is nothing to make. I tried running the shell scripts, but I got errors. Any guidance appreciated.

Answer 1

Normally it's supposed to come with an INSTALL file to read. Since it doesn't, here's the basic routine:

./configure
make
sudo make install

Note that configure has a number of options it can take; pass --help to see them.

Answer 2

If you simply want to build and install it:

./configure
make
sudo make install

If you make some changes to this project and rebuild it later do:

aclocal - adds aclocal.m4 to directory. Defines some m4 macros used by the auto tools.
'autoconf '- creates configure from configure.ac
'automake' - Creates Makefile.in from Makefile.am
'./configure' - creates Makefile from Makefile.in 
'make' 
sudo make install

Answer 3

One recommendation to make on top of the various correct answers is to see what build options are available. The first command I like to run is:

./configure --help

This will list various build options. Some are standard (such as --prefix= for changing where the package is intalled) and others are project specific (often in the form --with-FOO to build with extra features based on the FOO package).