How do you install from source and precompiled tarballs?

[LDC2357]

Ok I know that if you download source for a program you run
./configure
make
make install

unless its already precompiled at which point there are shell scripts that you can run. I have Assault Cube which came that way and I got it to work.

But, most of the time, I type ./configure and nothing happens...
Or ./configure works and does stuff, then make does nothing...
I am always hitting a terminal wall or something.

Or if its precompiled, as in the case of Daimonin, it runs and makes a .daimonin folder that has this in it...

installer (folder)
contains:
client.tar.gz
Daimonin (config file)
daistarer.sh
daistarter.sh
distro (txt file has the word debian in it, I know this is from the installation where I told it what distro I have.)

I just don't know how to debug this stuff. It would be great if someone could point me to a complete how to for installing from source and/or debugging for this.

Thanks in advance.

[rokytnji]

Is the package build-essential installed?

[jayd512]

Take a look at post #2 on this page.

[LDC2357]

1) I have build-essential installed
2)Read the second post as recomended...as I said before I don't know what is going on here. I'm running Crunchbang, I don't think that's an issue, (I think its just stable debian anyway), build essential is installed, but nothing works the way its supposed to work.

I'll do a step by step with daimonin (I have a precompiled version and a tarball, this is for the first one) to clarify whats going on.

1) I downloaded daimonin-installer-0.5.tar.gz from there site
2) I ran the appropriate tar command to unpack it to a folder called daimonin-installer. This folder contains the following files:

ldc@crunchbang:~/games/linux/DAIMONIN/daimonin-installer$ ls
changelog               dai-installer-gtk.bash  dai-installer-kde.bash  license.txt
dai-installer-cli.bash  dai-installer-help-gui  instfunctions.bash      README

3) Next I read the README file, ran the appropriate .bash (I think it was the gtk.bash), which ran an installer which asked if I wanted to install and what distro I had bla bla bla.

4) After the installer was finished it closed there is a .daimonin folder in my home directory, which contains installer (folder) which contains

ldc@crunchbang:~/.daimonin/installer$ ls
client.tar.gz  daimonin.desktop  daistarer.sh  daistarter.sh  distro

I think the .sh files are shell scripts and I think they sorta function like .exe (bad analogy?) but clicking on them or right-clicking and selecting "execute" does nothing and I have no idea how to run it from the terminal.

[zenwalker]

If all you want to do is run the *.sh files, first make certain they are executable using the ls -al and if not the chmod commands, then go to their containing directory and issue the command ./*.sh (substituting the name of file for the *) -- all in terminal, the last two as root.

[Alpha90]

If your compiling from source more often than not there will be an INSTALL or README file to explain the installation process