People, I was just handed the root password to my server running Linux whitebox 4. I'm not much of a SysAdmin but I'm handy at running shell commands and operating vi. I'd like to get skilled at installing software from source. Typically what I've done in the past is download a .tgz, tar zxf, confifigure --prefix /opt/local, make make install On my Mac though, I've found a utility-website (http://darwinports.org/) which wraps the above sequence with a nice command called 'port'. The way port works is that I search for things I want to install with a command like: port search perl which gives me this: zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# port search perl subversion-perlbindings devel/subversion-perlbindings 1.2.3 Perl bindings for the subversion version control system. perl5.8 lang/perl5.8 5.8.7 Perl 5.8.x - Practical Extraction and Report Language p5-gtk-perl perl/p5-gtk-perl 0.7009 Bindings to Gtk+ library p5-libintl-perl perl/p5-libintl-perl 1.14 Perl internationalization library p5-libwww-perl perl/p5-libwww-perl 5.803 The World-Wide Web library for Perl p5-libxml-perl perl/p5-libxml-perl 0.08 Collection of Perl modules for working with XML. p5-log-log4perl perl/p5-log-log4perl 1.00 Log4j implementation for Perl p5-perl-ldap perl/p5-perl-ldap 0.33 A client interface to LDAP servers p5-perl-tidy perl/p5-perl-tidy 20031021 Parses and beautifies perl source p5-perlio-eol perl/p5-perlio-eol 0.13 This is a Perl extension for normalizing line endings (used by svk). p5-perlio-via-dynamic perl/p5-perlio-via-dynamic 0.11 This is a Perl extension for dynamic perlIO layers (used by svk). p5-perlio-via-symlink perl/p5-perlio-via-symlink 0.02 This is a PerlIO layer for creating symlinks (used by svk). libapreq-perl www/libapreq-perl 1.1 Perl Libraries for Apache::Request and Apache::Cookie mod_perl www/mod_perl 1.29 Embeds a Perl interpreter in the Apache 1.3 server mod_perl2 www/mod_perl2 2.0.1 Embeds a Perl interpreter in the Apache2 server zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# Then, I install perl with a command like this: zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# port install perl5.8 ---> Fetching perl5.8 ---> Attempting to fetch perl-5.8.7.tar.bz2 from http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/ ---> Verifying checksum(s) for perl5.8 ---> Extracting perl5.8 ---> Applying patches to perl5.8 ---> Configuring perl5.8 ---> Building perl5.8 with target all ---> Staging perl5.8 into destroot ---> Packaging tgz archive for perl5.8 5.8.7_0 ---> Installing perl5.8 5.8.7_0 ---> Activating perl5.8 5.8.7_0 ---> Cleaning perl5.8 zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# zmac11:/Users/oracle root# So, does Linux have anything like this 'port' utility? -Dan
