From windows to * nix (1) Software Installation

Note: this series of articles describes the similarities and differences between windows and unix-like operating systems (* nix) for programmers, and focuses on * nix. This article covers program installation, daily operations, editors, IDE, pipelines, GUI vs CLI.... The purpose of this article is to guide experienced windows programmers to smoothly transition to * nix.

 

The general steps for installing software under windows are as follows: Find setup.exe, click it, and next, select the installation directory, next, select the optional components, next ,...

* Similar to nix, the difference is that the command line completes:

 

Tar-xzf xxx-n.n.n.tgz; <br/> Cd xxx-n.n.n; <br/>./configure; <br/> make intall 

The above tar is for decompression,./configure is for configuration, make is for compilation, and make install is for installation.

Most of the things to consider are done during configuration.

During configuration, use the command line parameter to specify:

./Configure -- Help 

You can obtain available parameter descriptions.

A common parameter is -- prefix, for example

# Install to your home directory <br/>./configure -- prefix = $ home <br/> # Install to the/usr directory <br/>./configure -- prefix =/usr 

 

 

We know that windows software usually specifies its own configuration files, program files, and library files to a directory, such as c:/program files/xxx

The sub-directory structure under the sub-directory is the random structure of the software author.

* The prefix parameter for nix software configuration is also the specified installation directory,

Difference 1: The Sub-directories in the installation directory have a set of naming conventions, such as $ prefix/bin program files, $ prefix/etc configuration files, and $ prefix/lib library files.

Difference 2: Most * nix software will be installed under the same prefix, usually/usr,/usr/local.

 

In addition, common configure parameters include -- With-xxx, -- without-xxx, -- enable-xxx, and -- disable -- XXX. The first two determine whether to reuse other software, and the last two determine whether a feature of the software is available.

 

The above describes the general installation process from the source code. Binary installation is much simpler (take Gentoo release as an example ):

 

Emerge-K xxx 

 

For other releases, RedHat uses rpm, Debian uses apt-get, and FreeBSD uses pkg_add.

Using Binary installation means that the custom features are lost, because the Binary Package is compiled from the source code with a set of configuration parameters in advance.