SBR600: Building software from a source tarball using a makefile

When I first tried learning to use Linux in 2007, one of the few challenges that I had was installing & running a software that I downloaded from the Internet. I've downloaded Nvidia video card driver from the web and I had no idea what to do with it.

In Linux, a software is distributed in a few different types of packages and each of those types require different ways to build (install) it. One of those ways I'm going to try out today is compiling from the source code.

NLED, the Neat Little EDitor is distributed in source code with makefile. It's also nice and small (Easy to play and practice with). More information about NLED is available at http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/software/nled/.

First, use wget command in terminal to download the nled tarball. Internet connection is required and download link can be found at http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/software/nled/.

wget http://cdot.senecac.on.ca/software/nled/nled_2_52_src.tgz

Once downloaded, extract the files out from the tarball.

tar vxzf nled_2_52_src.tgz

Move to new extracted directory that contains nled files. And run makefile.

cd nled-2.52/

make

If compiling fails, most likely packages that are required for compiling are missing. In my case, ncurses.h file was required but not available on my machine. To find out what package contain ncurses.h file, first gain root access and use yum command.

su --

input root password

yum provides "*/ncurses.h"

yum did its querying and returned that ncurses-devel contains file ncurses.h. For now, I'm going to use yum to install ncurses-devel package.

yum install ncurses-devel

Run the makefile again. Repeat the previous steps if it fails compiling.

make

NLED is successfully installed and ready to use. Use NLED by typing...

./nled