On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 21:22 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote: > > About ./configure and make: > > > > Performing ./configure and make as an > > ordinary user is probably safe enough. > Well, though it's safe in the sense of "It won't corrupt your system", > this is likely to have other side-effects on this user. > > > It's doing the make install as root > > that has the potential for trouble. > > My first thought in this regard > > is to determine whether one really > > wants the software installed as > > as system software. If not, > > something like > > make prefix=$HOME/verylocal install > > will probably do the trick. > Nope. Think along library search paths, include file search paths > configuration file search paths and hard-coded directory/filenames. > > In most case you will want > configure --prefix=$HOME/verylocal > not > make prefix=$HOME/verylocal > > because packages containing hard-codes directories/filenames/paths will > encode them at configuration time. > I.e. most packages having been configured with > ./configure --prefix=/usr > and installed with > make prefix=$HOME > will contain hard-coded references to /usr instead of $HOME. make -n is a good thing, though if something that compiles won't run, it won't tell you what the runtime library search path should be. > > One does not have to become root. > > If one does want the software > > installed as system software, > > do some testing first. > > Edit Makefile, > > removing any .SILENT targets. > > As an ordinary user, > > make -n prefix=/opt 'CP=cp -i' install 2>&1 | tee makeno.out > Same as above. This won't work in most cases. In this case, I'm not sure what "won't work" means. Do you mean that it won't give one a good idea whether something one doesn't want clobbered will get clobbered? -- Mike hennebry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Demons after money? Whatever happened to the still-beating heart of a virgin? No one has any standards any more." -- Rupert Giles
