CHAPTER 29 INSTALLING SOFTWARE if the software (Free web hosts)
CHAPTER 29 INSTALLING SOFTWARE if the software relies on certain library files, you ll need to install developer (devel) versions of them, as well as the libraries themselves if they re not already installed. For example, if you re compiling a program to run under the GNOME desktop, you ll need development versions of the GTK2+ libraries. Under Ubuntu, it s possible to install all the program-compilation tools you need by installing the build-essentialmetapackage. You can use the Synaptic Package Manager or the following apt-getcommand at the command prompt: sudo apt-get build-essential On my test system, most of these files were read from the installation CD, rather than downloaded, so you ll either have to have the CD present or remove its entry in your list of repositories in order to force APT to get the packages online. Unpacking the Tarball and Solving Dependencies Let s take a look at installing a program from source. Dillo is a stripped-down web browser that s designed for speed and small file size. It s a fun little program that s good to have around in the event of your main browser developing a glitch that you can t fix. The Dillo home page is www.dillo.org, so head over there and choose to download the latest version of the source code. Note Okay, you got me. If you use apt-cache or the Synaptic Package Manager to look through the repositories, you ll see that Dillo is available as a ready-to-install package. But Ubuntu s package repositories are so comprehensive that, frankly, I couldn t find anything to demonstrate program compilation that wasn t already in there! The first thing to do is to unpack and uncompress the tarball (if you wish to learn more about the tar command, see Chapter 32): tar jxf dillo-0.8.5.tar.bz2 Of course, you should replace the filename with that of the version you downloaded. Next, you ll need to switch into the source code directory and take a look at the README file. This will tell you what dependencies Dillo has and also any caveats you may need to take into account in order to compile Dillo on a Linux system: cd dillo-0.8.5 less README Note Unlike binary files, source code is rarely designed with one specific computer platform in mind. For example, Dillo is able to compile on all types of Unix, including Linux, Solaris, BSD, and others. With a little work, it might even be possible to compile it under Windows!