Debian Wheezy and Compiling

[greentoad10]

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to linux, and I'm currently trying to install kismet onto my raspberry pi. I've issued the ./configure command to get it ready for compiling, but I don't think that I'm understanding the make command. Do I just issue 'make' and it's supposed to compile it, or am I supposed to target a specific file?

Thanks

[Exheon]

Hii you there

Yes you just have to issue "make" to start compiling your app after you run ./configure [assuming "configure" ended up with no errors]

Now, let me explain the overall compilation process briefly

First we run configure script provided by the maintainer of the program to compile.

# ./configure

Configure will basically search for dependencies needed to compile and run our program, and then set the makefile witch will be used later.
If everything went ok, and configure output no errors we can proceed to run the make command, witch in most cases will work just as "make":

# make

so makefile is readied and the compilation starts, generating binaries that can be run by Linux
In most cases an additional action must be taken in order to use the app properly:

make install

this will actually install the program, although some programs do not need to be installed this way is good to know that some apps do.

and well, that describes the overall process, some apps will actually need some parameter passed to either configure or make, or even more steps, (like "buildconf" to generate a configure script first) that's why is very important to read the "INSTALL" and/or "Readme" files provided with the sources, in order to know better about how you should build your app.

I hope you find this helpful, and let us know if you make it, or if you encounter problems so we can try to solve them
See ya!

[elija]

Typically make install should be run as root as the installation puts files outside of your home directory.