Part 1
In this lab we download and build an open source software package and get it running on our own machine. The following are the steps and comments on the process.
- I chose nano as the software package to install, expecting it to be relatively small and straightforward to set up. After a bit of searching, I downloaded the compressed source code from the downloads page of the nano website.
- Since nano is meant for use on Linux systems, I decided to build it on seneca’s Matrix server remotely using Putty. I tried to locate the makefile in order to build the program, but was confused by the various files with names like Makefile.am and Makefile.in.
- After seeking some professor assistance, I discovered that despite all the files with makefile in their name, none of them was quite what I was looking for. It was necessary to run a configure command to let the package recognize what environment it was in and create a Makefile accordingly.
- New problem: permissions. It turns out that unzipping the file on my windows machine and dropping into my matrix account. After unzipping it on matrix…
- > configure
- > make
- Success!
An unexpectedly bumpy journey. Lessons learned:
- Makefiles don’t come automatically. It may take some digging/configuring to get it to appear.
- Be careful with unzipping.
