How do you recompile programs?

[mattward2k]

Had a good search round both the forums and the internet and I'm a bit of a n00b to proper linux operations... can't seem to find anything that explicitly explains how to recompile a program.

Lots of things talk about using ./compile, but I presume this is when you download a new program and it comes with this executable; what happens if I already have a program installed and just want to recompile with with --extra-options?

[variant]

to compile software with linux you need to have some stuff installed allready its probably on your cds. you should install gcc

you will probably have the source code (src) for the program on your linux cd's if not you can download them easily enough. the src will be in a tarball (archive like .zip) i normaly save all the src i download to /home/variant/source (mplayer for example) so in a terminal cd to that dir:

cd /home/variant/source

then unpack the src archive like this:

tar -xvzf mplayer.tar.gz (for .gz files)

and

tar -xvjf mplayer.tar.bz2 (for .bz2 files)

this will extract the src code to a directoty named mplayer under the source dir.
so cd to that directory and then type:

configure

this will configure the sourcecode for your system and may take a while depending on the package your compileing and the hardware you use, so if it seems to lock up for a while and your systems slow then just give it plenty of time.

then type:

make

again this may take some time. now to install the software you should be root, so type

"su" then hit enter (and type the root password)

now finaly type

make install

the package should now be installed :)

[bpark]

In that source directory that you untarred and unziped, run this (in this order):

$ make clean
$ make
$ make install