Idea #7307: Include an application for compiling

This idea is a duplicate of idea #381: Make build + install from source trivial.

Written by rainwalker the 20 Apr 08 at 19:02. Category: Accessibility.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

If I hadn't known what a README was, I probably never would have learned to use "make", "make install", etc. when I had to compile my own programs. However, I've talked to quite a few people who couldn't figure out how to install/run something because they didn't know that they had to compile it, and if they did, they couldn't figure out how.
Maybe there should be an application that assists or automates compiling of applications? For example, if you open a directory with a "configure" or "make" script in it, a dialog could pop up saying "It looks like you need to compile the contents of this directory" or something like that.

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[Report a duplicate and merge its votes to this idea]

Comments

Natanael_L wrote on the 20 Apr 08 at 20:37

Brilliant idea! I'd love this!
I hate doing a bunch of terminal commands to compile stuff, so an application for this would be great!

chig00 wrote on the 20 Apr 08 at 22:31

I would prefer creation of proper binary deb package from source, or creation source-package rather than just installation. This will prevent system from getting "dirty".

Nat_Tuck wrote on the 20 Apr 08 at 23:11

Being able to automatically detect and compile arbitrary source archives sounds like a really hard problem.

It might be a good idea to try to figure out what the other approaches to allowing users to easily install recently released non-repository packages might be before a bunch of time gets spent on this specific suggestion.

Auzy wrote on the 21 Apr 08 at 01:53

OMG.. FFS, Do you guys EVER check for duplicates.. Every 2 days I swear, the exact same idea written in a different way.

The problem, which has been said lots of times isn't that they need compiling. The problem is, nobody knows which files to immediately run.

Vote up http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7167/ and that makes it easy for developers to make ALL Tar.gz files as easy to use as debs, and solves the compilation problem too (because developers can support this with 2 lines of text in a file). And it makes it easy to read the readme, and make the licence obvious.

This is a dupe of http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7165/

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